Trauma-informed practices with children and adolescents

Abstract

We have accepted the privilege of steering the editorial direction of the Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry with anticipated apprehension. What began as an information bulletin just over two decades ago, through growing pains, has been transformed into a notable scientific publication, now openly available on-line to the public and indexed in PubMed, PsychINFO, CINAHL, and Scopus. We owe much gratitude to Vivek Kusumakar, Mary Kay Nixon and Normand Carrey for their commendable efforts as past Editors. Times are rapidly changing in the field of child and adolescent mental health. Practitioners, policy makers and scientists from many disciplines are responding to the challenges of mental illness among youth by drawing on an increasingly wide range of perspectives from the social and psychological to the biological to enhance our understanding of mental illness. Today, we understand that many factors contribute to the onset and persistence of mental illness in youth and that each of these influences must be understood in order to develop effective intervention for affected individuals and communities. The issues of children and youth with mental illness are not simply after-thoughts in the minds of scientists and policy makers as they once might have been but are, instead, increasingly central to policy and science on mental illness in general. Disorders such as attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and autism play a key role in the advancement of the genetics and nosology of psychiatric disorders of all kinds in ways that could scarcely have been imagined a decade ago. These successes reflect the long-standing tradition of collaborative and multidisciplinary research and practice that characterizes child and adolescent psychiatry. Together, these forces and the diverse perspectives that drive them are creating a new science of children’s mental health. The uniqueness of the resulting perspective was acknowledged by the Royal College of Physicians and Surgeons of Canada in making Child and Adolescent Psychiatry a formal subspecialty in 2009. As the official voice of Canadian Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, the Journal has the mandate to make available state-of-the-art information that advances the understanding of mental illness in children and youth. The Journal is not only the voice of academic Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in Canada but also a prominent voice of practitioners, policy makers and scientists in Canada and beyond. In order to continue building its breadth, depth and excellence, the Journal will expand its efforts to reach out to all professionals interested in child and adolescent mental health in order to foster trans-disciplinary discussion of critical themes informed by qualitative and quantitative empirical evidence that will range from biology to social policy and include basic and clinical sciences, ethics and advocacy. Accordingly, it is our intent to expand the Journal’s editorial board and actively seek input from a wide range of perspectives on mental health of youth. Complementing this renewed vision, the Journal of the Canadian Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry has moved towards an electronic manuscript submission platform that will facilitate the process of review, allowing prompt response to manuscript authors.