The school as a setting for child and adolescent mental health interventions

Alan J Flisher

doi:10.4102/sajpsychiatry.v11i3.107

Abstract

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Highlights

Another way of making a case for the importance of mental disorders in childhood and adolescence involves estimating the proportion of people who develop a disorder in their lifetime who first manifested that disorder when they were young
Is the mental health care system in South Africa equipped to rise to this challenge? Clearly not
No province has a formally established and structured child and adolescent mental health team, despite the fact that the National Policy Guidelines for Child and Adolescent Mental Health call for ‘consultation, supervision and training ... to personnel on the other tiers’.4. These same national policy guidelines recognise that the health system is not the only setting in which mental health services can be delivered

Summary

Introduction

Another way of making a case for the importance of mental disorders in childhood and adolescence involves estimating the proportion of people who develop a disorder in their lifetime who first manifested that disorder when they were young. Is the mental health care system in South Africa equipped to rise to this challenge? In the Northern Cape (the province with the largest land mass and smallest population) there is just one psychiatrist for people of all age groups, whose mode of transport to his clinics is a small airplane.[3] No province has a formally established and structured child and adolescent mental health team, despite the fact that the National Policy Guidelines for Child and Adolescent Mental Health call for ‘consultation, supervision and training ...

Results

Conclusion