Childhood Mental Disorders Factors

NB: We do not resell your papers. Upon ordering, we do an original paper exclusively for you.

NB: All your data is kept safe from the public.

Table of Contents

Childhood Disorders: Classification
Main Body
Reference

Childhood Disorders: Classification

Childhood disorders develop in childhood and may manifest in adulthood. These disorders are classified into three classes. These categories include behavioral disorders, emotional disorders, and developmental disorders (Mash & Wolfe, 2013). Different developmental pathways have been proposed as causes of these conditions. Children with early childhood maltreatment have been seen to have possible outcomes of mood disorders, eating disorders, and conduct disorders. Other pathways suggested include genetic patterns, familial characteristics, and environmental features that could lead to one or several disorders individually or combined (Mash & Wolfe, 2013).

The causes of childhood mental disorders can be brain-based disorders or behavioral-based disorders. Most of the disorders are common brain disorders. Structural brain anomalies, in addition to irregularities occasioning neurochemical problems, are the main contributors to brain-based disorders. A child may be born with these abnormalities or they may arise, as a consequence, of emotional stress or physical stress. These can be demonstrated through familial characteristics since most of them are genetic.

Conversely, behavioral problems are, as a result, of difficulty faced by the child either at home among the siblings or at school among friends, in a child who is physically healthy (Giel et al., 1981). Similar to brain-based defects, behavioral complications can also come from emotional stress.

The limitation to this is that it is indecisive to point out these abnormalities because they may show similar traits making the treatment as well as the prognosis difficult. This causes a chronic form of the disease that spills to adolescence and finally to adulthood.

The best integral approach is the equifinality approach where all the happenings of early childhood are analyzed in detail to find the cause of the condition. This helps the assessor understand all the possible causes of the disorder and any other related disorder (Mash & Wolfe, 2013).

Main Body

Data

The federal bureau of investigations collects data for Uniform Crime Report (UCR) using two instruments: UCR1 aggregate survey and UCR2 incidence-based survey. UCR1 receives data summary of over one hundred crimes committed since 1962 while UCR2 is a continuous collection tool that collects each incident as they occur. The information is collected from the state police, traffic data as well as crime data. Data is in addition collected from all the states and analyzed in a central collection place. The respondent is called via telephone for clarification and correction (Biderman & Lynch, 1991). The importance of this information is that it profiles each criminal linking them to the crimes committed. It is easy to follow up with the criminal because the profile of the offender is posted on the website.

Physical Abuse

Physical abuse, whereby an injury or physical harm is inflicted on the child. It might result from a deliberate effort by a grown-up child or an adult to harm a child. In some cases, it is due to extreme disciplining of a child using undue force with no respect for the child’s fitness, health, or age. The use of an object such as sticks and belts to punish the child may be thought of as an effective way of punishing a child, but most of the time it leads to physical abuse. The following are elements of physical abuse (Gosselin, 2014)

Unpredictability. There are no clear guidelines and thus the child does not know what will lead to punishment. The child lives in fear and has no confidence in what they do.
Unable to control anger. This is when the disciplinarian acts out of anger and thus uncontrollably punishes the child without limits.
Using fear to regulate child conduct. Physically abusive parents who instill fear in children as a way to make them behave well usually bring up children who fear them rather than disciplined children.
Following this abuse, the outcome is that the child grows to be insecure as the child lives in fear all his childhood life and lacks confidence in life. Additionally, the child may have broken limbs as well as sited physical scars.

The Nervous System

The nervous system is a coordinated biological system that comprises PNS and CNS. The central nervous system is the center covered by bone and skull, where information from all parts of the body is collected, assembled, and the appropriate action is taken. The components of the CNS are the brain and the spinal cord. Nerve impulses from the nerve endings are collected in the spinal cord. Here, there are long nerve cells that relay information to the brain. The brain processes the information brought in and generates impulses to respond to the impulses sent to it.

These impulses may require the production of other chemicals such as hormones, which happen in the pituitary gland, interpreting the information brought from the sensory organs such as the eyes, or involuntary muscle movements such as the movement of food in the gut. The PNS, on the other hand, is not covered with any bone and has two components: a somatic nervous system that is responsible for body movement and to receive stimuli and an autonomic nervous system that coordinates involuntary movements such as smooth muscles (Kalat, 2014). The nervous system serves us well by coordinating all the muscle movements. This includes the smooth muscles which move involuntarily.

The Evolution of Brain

The brain’s frontal lobe of the brain is the part of the brain that thinks. Evolutionary studies have traced humans from the apes by measuring the skull volume and showing that as human beings evolved from apes, their brains increased in size and they got more intelligent. The frontal lobe of the human being’s brain is a larger brain than that of other animals. This makes humans more intelligent than other animals (Hill & Walsh, 2005). However, the size of the brain among the same species does not necessarily dictate individual intelligence (Kalat, 2014).

Neurons

Neurons are among the initial cells to be formed and specialize during the early fetus formation. They are involved in processing information and producing appropriate stimuli to direct the functions of the body. These neurons are thereafter susceptible to degradation through trauma and apoptosis. The neurons in the peripheral nervous system regenerate while those in the central nervous system do not regenerate (Kalat, 2014). Neurons contribute to the function of human activities by collecting stimuli from the sensory organs, like eyes, and relaying it to the brain that in turn process the signal to respond to the stimuli to make one see.

Reference

Biderman, A. D., & Lynch, J. P. (1991). Understanding crime incidence statistics: Why the UCR diverges from the NCS. Springer-Verlag Publishing.

Giel, R., De Arango, M. V., Climent, C. E., Harding, T. W., Ibrahim, H. H. A., Ladrido-Ignacio, L.,… & Younis, V. O. A. (1981). Childhood mental disorders in primary health care: results of observations in four developing countries. Pediatrics, 68(5), 677-683.

Gosselin, D. K. (2014). Heavy hands: An introduction to the crimes of family violence, (5^th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall.

Hill, R. S., & Walsh, C. A. (2005). Molecular insights into human brain evolution. Nature, 437(7055), 64-67.

Kalat, J. (2014). Biological psychology, (11^th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.

Mash, E. J., & Wolfe, D. A. (2013). Abnormal child psychology, (5^th ed.). Boston, MA: Cengage Learning.

Click Here To Order Now!