A child can be “healthy” using many measures, but consider this definition: A healthy child can participate in age-appropriate activities without limitations.
For a 6-month old infant, that may mean babbling or rolling over; for a 14-year-old, it may mean finishing math homework before heading down the street to a friend’s house. An infection, a broken bone or a chronic condition like asthma might limit those activities. In pediatric health care, we are used to treating those kinds of physical ailments.
[See: Apps to Mind Your Mental Health.]
Caring for a child’s health has become more than that, though, especially in the last few decades. A 2012 report from physicians and researchers in the University of California system revealed that for the first time since the federal government began collecting data on the subject, more children had activities limited by chronic developmental, emotional and behavioral conditions than by physical ones.
Or, as a headline from the Journal of the American Medical Association put it in the same year: “Chronic Mental Health Issues in Children Now Loom Larger than Physical Problems.”
That may be surprising for some, but it just reinforces what many in pediatrics already know. A 2010 study found that 1 in 5 children have or have had a seriously impairing mental disorder. A 2016 study found that children who are hospitalized for a physical condition ultimately stay in the hospital longer if they also have a mental health condition.
We must change the way we think about child health care, then. It is not just treating a broken bone or managing asthma. It is also working with children who have behavioral health issues and their families.
[See: 10 Concerns Parents Have About Their Kids’ Health.]
One obstacle to this shift in perspective involves understanding “behavioral health,” a sometimes vague term. We use it to mean the treatment and study of a variety of conditions:
— Mental illness. This is a brain disorder often affecting how a person thinks, feels and relates to others. Those disorders can include depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, anorexia, bulimia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder.
— Developmental disorders. These include autism spectrum disorders, Down syndrome and intellectual disabilities.
— Behaviors affecting physical, emotional or mental well-being. These include substance abuse, reactions to stress or trauma, feeding problems, suicide attempts and feelings associated with treatment of a medical illness (for example, a child with diabetes who develops needle phobia after repeated insulin shots).
Explained in those ways, it becomes clear that almost everyone knows a family dealing with behavioral health issues. The family may be their own.
At Nationwide Children’s Hospital, where I work, we know that one of the focuses of child health care must be child behavioral health care. We have recently broken ground on the Big Lots Behavioral Health Pavilion, which will become the country’s largest behavioral health treatment and research center specifically for children and adolescents on a pediatric medical campus.
[See: 9 Things to Do or Say When a Loved One Talks About Taking Their Life.]
I am proud of this effort, but one building or program alone is not enough. There are too few resources for children who need them, and the stigma attached to behavioral health issues keeps some families from ever seeking out the programs and experts that are available.
The national dialogue around children’s behavioral health care has to evolve. If we want children to reach their full potentials, we have to recognize what is limiting them, and do something about it.
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A Call for Children’s Behavioral Health Care originally appeared on usnews.com
