Resilience and adaptation in the face of early genetic or environmental risk has become a major interest in child psychiatry over recent years. However, we still remain far from an understanding of how developing human brains as a whole adapt to the diffuse and widespread atypical synaptic function that may be characteristic of some common developmental disorders. The first part of this paper d...

Child Psychiatry (as one of the 'Cinderella' specialities) has had to look carefully at its interface with other disciplines and at the management of the referral stage of cases. Because so much of our work is in liaison with others, failure to clarify the expectation of the referral, the degree of collaboration needed and who is taking responsibility for what, results in dissatisfactions and m...

Social researchers increasingly survey children and young adolescents. They are convinced that information about perspectives, attitudes, and behaviors of children should be collected from the children themselves. Methodological expertise on surveying children is still scarce, and researchers rely on ad-hoc knowledge from fields such as child psychiatry and educational testing, or on methodolog...

The question of whether child psychiatry represents an entry level or a specialized area of practice in occupational therapy necessitates the examination of a more fundamental issue: Can an area of practice whose knowledge is basic to the preparation of occupational therapists be considered a specialty' Knowledge of human development throughout the life cycle is fundamental. It is essential to ...

OBJECTIVE To review the nature of outcome measures used to evaluate psychosocial treatment in children. METHOD Recent research findings that highlight the importance of outcome data and justify randomized controlled trials (RCTs) are reviewed. RESULTS Outcome measures of child therapy can focus on changes in the child's symptoms, adaptation to the psychosocial environment, cognitive or emot...

Introduction Child psychiatry was developed around the turn of the century following an increasing recognition of childhood behavioural and emotional issues. Most child psychiatrists provide care within specialty clinics and tertiary hospitals. Treatment for mental health disorders for children and adolescents has improved considerably with more evidence-based and effective medications, and psy...

The title of my presentation emphasizes the word crIsIs. And .indeed, child custody problems are human crises. A family unit is breaking up and each member, in his/her individual way, feels the pain. The law attempts to solve this crisis by "making a decision." It puts an official seal on some judgment, and then will "wash its hands" of the case because "it has been decided." And who is left? T...

OBJECTIVE The efficacy of mood stabilizers in children and adolescents has not been studied adequately. This article will review existing studies and highlight some important issues in designing future studies on these agents. METHOD Electronic databases including Medline, Psycholnfo, and CRISP were searched for data in children receiving compounds that have mood-stabilizing properties in adu...

The authors describe their experience to support the view that training in child psychiatry is an effective way for the paediatrician in training to gain an understanding of that specialty. It is also an efficient way to acquire certain skills, which will be helpful in the future, either in hospital or community paediatrics.

OBJECTIVES This pilot study explored the relationship between parental therapeutic alliance, maternal attachment style and child and family functioning in a sample of families with a child aged five to twelve years receiving child psychiatry day hospital treatment for complex co-morbid disorders. METHOD Self-report measures of therapeutic alliance, maternal attachment style, child behaviour a...