Common emotional disorders

As I continued researching emotional disorders in children, I came to the realization that I must narrow down the category of emotional disorders in order to answer the questions from my first post. The types, signs, and effects of emotional disorders seem endless and it wouldn’t be very effective to go over all of these issues for the wide range of disorders. While researching the most common emotional disorders in children, I discovered that the term “emotional disorder” actually covers a broad range of psychological AND behavioral disorders that affect a person’s emotions. According to the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH), emotional and behavioral disorders affect 10-15 percent of children globally. I was shocked that the number was so high and was expecting to read approximately 5% or so. The two types of emotional/psychological/behavioral disorders that I came across most often were “anxiety disorders” and “conduct disorders”. According to the Anxiety Disorders Association of America, anxiety disorders are the most common psychiatric illnesses affecting children and adults. On the other hand, conduct disorders are said to be the most serious childhood psychiatric disorders that affect approximately 6-10% of boys and 2-9% of girls, according to Doctor Jim Chandler, MD.

Now that I have answered the questions, what is the most common type of emotional disorder and how common are emotional disorders, I will dive into the remaining questions for my next post. If you are interested in reading more about anxiety and/or conduct disorders, the following two websites contain quite a bit of information:

http://www.psychologyinfo.com/problems/conduct.html & http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/anxiety-disorders-in-children-and-adolescents/index.shtml  

References:

Matthys, Wallter and Lochman, John E. Oppositional Defiant  

         Disorder and Conduct Disorder in Children. John Wiley  

         & Sons (2011).

Nature vs. Nurture

I recently wrote about the causes of emotional disorders and found out a great deal of information. I now want to answer the other questions I had from my first post so that I can move onto the “main topic” of discovering how teachers can best support students with emotional disorders in a positive and effective manner. Before I do so, I think it is crucial for me to mention the idea of “nature vs. nature” in relation to emotional disorders. A friend of mine asked me a question that really got me thinking about how this can affect my blog. Emotional disorders can be a sensitive topic and tricky to explain because everyone has their own views about psychology. There are so many different “levels” (in relation to the severity of the disorder) of emotional disorders as well, which is unique to each individual. Also, even if two children have the exact same disorder, the causes of the disorder and how the two students behave could be completely different. Here is an example: Amy and John are both in second grade. Amy and John both suffer from anxiety. Amy started suffering from anxiety after her dad moved out of the house and her parents are now going through a divorce. John’s parents are happily married, yet he started suffering from anxiety a week after he started second grade and his parents and teachers are not sure why. Amy has been acting out the entire year, while John rarely misbehaves but is becoming more and more withdrawn from the rest of the students.

The point of writing this make-believe scenario (although it could be completely realistic) is to show how everyone is different and has had different life experiences which can cause their disorder to be mild or severe, easy to treat or difficult to treat, etc, based on whether the cause is known or unknown. Some people may argue that John’s genetics is what caused his anxiety (nature) because his parents and teachers are unable to determine why his anxiety started, and that Amy’s anxiety was environmentally related and was caused because of her home life (nurture). I have always believed that nature and nature both influence children and adults psyche, yet there is no solid proof that validates my belief 100%. There is also no factual evidence to support that solely genetics or solely environmental factors influence the psyche of a person. Therefore, some of the information I state in my blogs may lean towards one side or the other depending on the topic area, but I am in no way taking sides or saying that one belief is right and the other wrong – I am simply doing my best to state the facts and will then build my posts from those. J

Causes continued...

I have done some more research about the causes of emotional disorders and I will now touch on the two causes that I mentioned in the previous post. The two causes left to discuss are ‘home and community’ and ‘school’. I found most of my information about how a child’s home and community can greatly influence emotional disorders by reading the information provided here:

http://www.education.com/reference/article/emotional-behavioral-disorders-defined/

According to this site, “Environment and culture are the context in which behavior unfolds” (Maag, 2000). “Rarely does a single negative experience lead to or aggravate emotional problems, but combinations of poverty, abuse, neglect, parental stress, inconsistent expectations and rules, confusion, and turmoil over long periods of time can do so” (CDF, 2004; Hosp & Reschly, 2002). From the research I have done about this issue, I have found the poverty is one of the most commonly mentioned factor in children with emotional disorders. More students that suffer from emotional or behavioral disorders are living in poverty than not, but I wouldn’t go as far as saying poverty causes emotional disorders, but the two are definitely correlated.

The last possible contributing factor that can cause an emotional disorder in children is school. When I read about how this could cause an emotional disorder, I expected to mostly read about bullies and how the students being bullied are affected by them at school. Surprisingly, bullies were not mentioned what so ever. Instead, I found out that schools and teachers influence emotional disorders in children and can improve or worsen a child’s condition. I’ve always believed that teachers can play such an important, if not the most important, roll in a child’s life and that a great teacher not only cares about academics, but the emotional, social, and overall wellbeing of the children as well. What I found really grasped my attention and brought back several negative experiences that I had in an elementary classroom. The education website stated, “Problems can get better because of teacher’s actions or worse for the same reason”. Unfortunately, my experience in one classroom from the past proves this statement has validity. I witnessed students being belittled and made fun of by a teacher on a day to day basis and often heard parents saying that their children were afraid to come to school. I won’t go into detail, but I can say from my experience that schools and teachers can absolutely affect students and their emotional stability in a negative way. I decided to browse the internet for articles about teachers who are cruel or unprofessional to students. I found numerous articles on this issue and wanted to share this one:

http://www.wave3.com/global/Story.asp?s=8388558

At the end of the article, the boy’s stepfather says that his son had been tormented for 149 days at school and now they have to look into getting his psyche checked. I can only imagine what these parents went through after hearing the video tape of the teacher belittling and embarrassing their son. It is such a shame that people like this get hired to influence the children who are our FUTURE. The damage is already done to this child and no matter what punishment the teacher faces, the emotional scars the boy has will last with him for a long time if not forever. It is devastating that some teachers abuse the power they have over children and that these children can be affected for years. I will look more into this and plan on eventually turning my focus towards how teachers can positively and negatively affect students in the classroom and/or cause emotional distress in children.

Causes of Emotional Disorders

I began to research more about emotional disorders last week and came across some very interesting information. One question that I intentionally didn’t list in my previous post was “What causes an emotional disorder?” I didn’t list this as a question because I know there are so many different causes and every case of emotional disorders in children is different because no two children have the exact same experiences. However, after researching emotional disorders, I came to the realization that it is important to mention the different types of causes because it is imperative to the treatment a child receives for their particular disorder. The three broad categories of what causes emotional disorders in children are the following: biological factors, home and community, and schools. I discovered that biological and genetic causes for emotional and behavioral disorders are being identified more and more as the years go on. One of the most prevalent biological causes of emotional or behavioral issues in children is prenatal drug exposure. “53% of drug exposed participants in Headstart Preschool programs are identified as having an emotional or behavioral problem” (Maag, 2000). I taught in a kindergarten classroom the last two weeks of my internship and I was introduced to a male child in the class who lived with his grandparents because his mother abused drugs while she was pregnant with him. I immediately thought of this child when I read the statement about emotional and behavioral disorders being related to prenatal exposure to drugs. I discovered that this child was actually one of the top students in the classroom. However, he had severe emotional and behavioral issues that effected not only him, but the other students and teacher in the classroom as well. The child had to sit at a desk that was separate and facing away from all the other students. I felt very bad for this child when I first saw where he sat, but it became clear to me by the end of the first week why it was so necessary to separate him. He was constantly distracting other students by touching them, taking their belongings, or being excessively loud and noisy. The other students were obviously very annoyed by this child and he was picked on for that reason. This made me so sad and angry at the same time because his emotional and behavioral issues could have completely been avoided if his mother would not have abused drugs. This child was very smart, so I can only imagine how smart he would be if he had not been exposed to the drugs. It is very important for teachers and parents to determine whether or not biological factors influence a child’s emotional and/or behavioral issues because, like I mentioned earlier, there is treatment such as counseling and medication that would benefit these children. The treatment for children with emotional and behavioral disorders can help these children immensely both in and out of a classroom setting. I spent a great deal of time reflecting on my experiences with the child who was exposed to drugs and I will continue my next blog by going over the other two causes of emotional and behavioral issues.

Emotional Disorders

Hello everyone! I am very interested in psychology and wanted to learn more about children with emotional disorders. There are many different types of emotional disorders and most children (as well as adults) usually suffer from more than just one emotional disorder. Therefore, I wanted to keep my blog somewhat broad in the beginning, but I plan to turn my focus towards how teachers can best help students with emotional disorders in the classroom, both academically and emotionally, once I have aquired the general information about these disorders. I have read articles on emotional disorders and a common statement that really sticks out in my mind is "emotional abuse almost always causes more damage to the victim than physical abuse and can leave deep and ever lasting scars within the victims mind." I have done quite a bit of research on emotional abuse and disorders over the past few years, but most of this research was focused on adults instead of children. Some questions I have about emotional disorders in children are: What is the most common type of emotional disorder? What are the most common signs in children with emotional disorders? How does emotional distress affect a child's behavior in the classroom? How common are emotional disorders? Is the commonality of elementary children with emotional disorders rising or falling? Why or why not? I am very excited to answer these questions in the next few blogs and I look forward to coming up with much more questions unexpectedly through my research. Once these questions are answered, I will most likely be narrowing my topic down to one or two emotional disorders that are the most common with elementary students so that I can aquire a great deal of knowledge which will hopefully lead me to successfully help these students in the classroom.