Sitler: Managing Depression and Anxiety in Children [newarkadvocate.com]

Rafael Maravilla(PACEs Connection Staff) 3/5/204:00 AM

By Penny Sitler, Newark Advocate, March 1, 2020

There’s much conversation about mental health in children and youth these days. At Welsh Hills School, local pediatrician Dr. William Knobelach recently spoke about depression and anxiety in school aged children to a standing room only crowd at a parent education event.

The Adverse Childhood Experiences Study (ACES), which looks at the impact of childhood trauma on health and well-being later in life, frequently comes up in talks about mental health and addiction. Ohio Governor Mike DeWine’s new Student Wellness and Success plan allocates funds statewide to school districts to provide services that students need to thrive, both in and out of school.

Dr. Knobelach shared we are experiencing a mental health crisis, as the rates of occurrence are increasing while the number of providers of mental health services are decreasing. General medical practitioners and pediatricians often assume management of mental health issues in patients. People typically feel comfortable with their doctors so it’s a common path to explore mental health concerns and begin treatment. The earlier mental health issues are addressed, the better the outcomes will be. On average, people wait ten years from onset of symptoms to diagnosis of mental health disorders. At Mental Health America we encourage beginning the conversation with a health practitioner as early as possible (#B4Stage4).

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Former Member

Public Policy Implications

Ultimate solution to the problems of violence -- whether from the remorseless predator or the reactive, impulsive youth -- is primary prevention. Our society is creating violent children and youth at a rate far faster than we could ever treat, rehabilitate or even lock away (Groves et al., 1993; Garbarino, 1993; Sturrock et al., 1983; Richters, 1993). No single intervention strategy will solve these heterogeneous problems. No set of intervention strategies will solve these transgenerational problems. In order to solve the problems of violence, we need to transform our culture.

We need to change our childrearing practices, we need to change the malignant and destructive view that children are the property of their biological parents. Human beings evolved not as individuals, but as communities. Despite Western conceptualizations, the smallest functional biological unit of humankind is not the individual. It is the clan. No individual, no single parent-child dyad, no nuclear family could survive alone. We survived and evolved as clans -- interdependent -- socially, emotionally and biologically. Children belong to the community, they are entrusted to parents. American society, and its communities, have let down parents and children. We have not provided parents with the information and resources to optimize their children's potential and, when parents fail, we act too late and with impotence to protect and care for maltreated children.

The true potential of the human brain is rarely, if ever, realized. The major expressor of that potential is experience. The most critical and formative experiences are those provided to the developing child in the incubator of the family and, optimally, by a vital, invested community. Past and present, our society dramatically undervalues children, despite the claims that 'we love children'.

It is in the nature of humankind to be violent, but it may not be the nature of humankind. Without major transformation of our culture, without putting action behind our 'love' of children, we may never find out."

https://www.researchgate.net/p...he_Cycle_of_Violence

3/7/2011:44 AM

Former Member

Laura Haynes Collector posted:
These early-arriving mental health problems, now seen in SCHOOL AGED children, point to the marked increase in the trauma these children have faced 0-5. AKA, attachment problems. These problems and traumas did not exist in huge numbers a generation or so ago when most children were, at least in infancy, cared for by their mothers. The first center-based group infant day care arrived in 1985. Now it is ubiquitous.
The main trauma that can befall a preschooler 0-5 is failing to achieve a secure attachment with one's mother or mother-substitute. The main Anti-ACE in that period is making a secure attachment..... that leads to self value, emotional self regulation, and self-efficacy.
Can we please recognize as a society that child mental health is PLUNGING and it is not explained by 'better/earlier diagnosis' or 'less stigma,' but rather there being more DEVELOPMENTAL traumas in early life? The bad mental health of grade schoolers is evidence of diminished nurture of our littlest kids.
Due to not connecting the dots between bad early parenting practices and later mental health problems, the USA is now CREATING MENTALLY ILL CHILDREN in large numbers. This is a national disgrace. We need to stop looking for the ACEs 10 traumas to explain preschoolers' mental health and instead look at the 'invisible ACES' of what these babies needed but did not get.

I wish I was this articulate. This is exactly what I have been trying to say and what every pediatric doctor, parent, citizen and anyone who cares about kids and the future has to understand. We are undergoing sociocultural devolution incredibly rapidly and nothing we are doing is turning this around. ACE screening is a distraction from creating social policies that promote the development of healthy child stress reactivity and healthy brain architecture, both of which occur only in the context of a safe and secure, consistent early attachment relationship.

3/6/203:29 PM

Laura Haynes CollectorMember

These early-arriving mental health problems, now seen in SCHOOL AGED children, point to the marked increase in the trauma these children have faced 0-5. AKA, attachment problems. These problems and traumas did not exist in huge numbers a generation or so ago when most children were, at least in infancy, cared for by their mothers. The first center-based group infant day care arrived in 1985. Now it is ubiquitous.

The main trauma that can befall a preschooler 0-5 is failing to achieve a secure attachment with one's mother or mother-substitute. The main Anti-ACE in that period is making a secure attachment..... that leads to self value, emotional self regulation, and self-efficacy.

Can we please recognize as a society that child mental health is PLUNGING and it is not explained by 'better/earlier diagnosis' or 'less stigma,' but rather there being more DEVELOPMENTAL traumas in early life? The bad mental health of grade schoolers is evidence of diminished nurture of our littlest kids.

Due to not connecting the dots between bad early parenting practices and later mental health problems, the USA is now CREATING MENTALLY ILL CHILDREN in large numbers. This is a national disgrace. We need to stop looking for the ACEs 10 traumas to explain preschoolers' mental health and instead look at the 'invisible ACES' of what these babies needed but did not get.

3/5/207:56 AM

Former Member

This is the path to drugging trauma. Doctors have one tool, a prescription pad. The family doctor is in no position to reverse psychosocial dysfunction or sociocultural degradation (a term I saw in something Dr. B. Perry wrote). The family doctor should not be put in a position to medicate kids or adults so that they are numb to the developmental effects of inadequate parenting and a cold and callous society that allows poor kids to sleep in tents and cars w/ little tangible concern for their wellbeing. This would only worsen the damage being done and cause moral injury for physicians as we are pushed to harm our patients. The push for doctors to fix psychosocial problems with a prescription pad created the opioid epidemic and we don’t need to do this again.

3/5/204:58 AM

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