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).
Megan,
ReplyDeleteLike you, I am also shocked that 10-15% of children worldwide suffer from emotional and behavioral disorders. When I was young I don't remember there being kids in my school who had emotional or behavioral disorders. I don't know if that was because back then they segregated the special education students from the general population, or if they were there and I just wasn't aware of it because it wasn't talked about or acknowledged. These days emotional and behavior disorders are talked about more openly. I remember being surprised the first time one of my children came home and told me about a child in their school who has "anger issues." To them it's just a normal thing for some students to have issues. I'd be interested in learning whether the number of children being diagnosed with emotional and/or behavioral disorders has increased over the last few decades.
Your blog is very interesting and I'm learning a lot about your topic. Keep up the good blogging!
Sarah