Living with a Pediatric Behavioral Health Condition

small child coloring Many factors can have an effect on your child’s mental health including chronic illness, trauma and stress at home or school. If your child has a behavioral health condition, it is important to work with medical experts who can help you learn to manage it.

Depending on your child’s needs, you may need to work with a child psychiatrist, psychologist, social worker, art therapist, or a team of professionals. Medication and talk therapy are two common treatments. Medications may include antidepressants or anxiolytics and talk therapy may involve just your child or the whole family. Through therapy, you and your child will find support and learn coping strategies.

Mental health and physical health impact one another. Provide your child a healthy routine with nutritious meals, adequate sleep and plenty of activity. If your child has a chronic illness, increased physical symptoms can have a negative effect on their emotional health. Be sure to address your child’s fears that may arise as a result of their illness.

If your child has a behavioral health condition, know that you are not alone. Your child’s doctor will be instrumental in providing them the help they need. Pay close attention to any changes in their behavior and schedule regular visits with their care team.

Transcript

The Pediatric Behavioral Health Team at National Jewish Health is really unique because all of our clinicians get to work with individuals dealing with chronic health issues as well as work in the modality of the general mental health setting.

So in addition to chronic illness and the impact it has on children and families, we are also well versed in more traditional things like anxiety, depression, family systems issues.

We also have a pediatric day program and our behavioral health team works multidisciplinary with our physicians so every family that comes to that program has a physician and a clinician assigned to them for the duration of their stay and that allows us to address the individual in a more holistic family-centered approach.