Child Health Psychology

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter aims to integrate the literature in child health psychology—a broad, multifaceted, and multidisciplinary field that encompasses the well‐being of infants, children, adolescents, and young adults and includes an emphasis on health, illness and injuries. Four basic assumptions are presented: (1) Children's health and illness must be viewed contextually, (2) pediatric psychology provides an umbrella through which child health can be summarized and integrated, (3) competence and stress‐and‐coping paradigms define our understanding of child health, (4) outcome studies are important in establishing psychological interventions within child health. A model describing three levels of child and family response to health care issues and suggesting three levels of psychological intervention is proposed as a framework for understanding the state of research on interventions in child health psychology. The empirical literature on universal (disease preventions: immunizations and primary care settings, prevention of unintentional injuries), selective (management of procedure‐related and disease‐related pain and distress, improving treatment adherence), and targeted (cognitive rehabilitation for children with traumatic brain injuries, social skills training for survivors of brain tumors, and interventions in transplantation) is reviewed and evaluated. Future goals for research in child health psychology are discussed.