Psychiatric disorders in childhood

Abstract

Psychiatric disorders in childhood From a clinical perspective, understanding the patient’s illness needs, helps determine our assessment, diagnosis and our treatment plan in the population of child and adolescents. The effective evaluation of different dimensions: Psychosocial Features: expectations, perceptions, and needs; Health Features: reference source, symptoms, quality of life impact; as well as geographic and linguistic diversity, cultural framework, must be also considered. The review of the two main diagnostic and classification systems in the field of psychiatry: the ICD-10 (chapter on mental and behavioral disorders) and the DSM-IV, represents the most important challenge, especially for the diagnostic and assessment in Child & Adolescent Psychiatry. The diagnostic classification should include additional information or dimensions that, while not a part of diagnosis per se, are important for making decisions about patient care, such as associated disability, acuity, exacerbating psychosocial factors, level of social support, and cultural factors. Clinical symptoms based on international classifications, allows identifying clinical entities in the population of children and adolescents, such as, substance use and abuse, emotional disorders especially bipolar disorders, attention deficit disorder and high prevalence of psychiatric comorbidity among themselves, hindering further diagnosis. In this speech, an overview of these conditions, particularly bipolar disorder in children and adolescents and their comorbidity, will be presented.