It's A Kid Thing by Kidpsychnurse: Kids

Showing posts with label Kids. Show all posts

Saturday, January 14, 2012

The Promise of a New Year

Image by Tony Trần via Flickr

We probably made resolutions that we know we will break. We watched football games and ate too much, maybe drank too much, and laughed a lot but not enough. The kids have gone back to school and our daily routine plays out just as it did last year. So far, so good. No big issues. Our kids may see it differently. They have returned to school where they may feel lost and alone. Worse still, they may be frightened. The world of a child with a mental illness is different than ours. They see things, feel things, hear things differently than we do. Kids all hear, see and feel things differently than adults. Their brains are not ready for the higher cognitive skills we adults have to filter everything that comes in. Kids experience everything vitally. Hurts are bigger and deeper. Fears are over whelming and non-ending. Anger is all encompassing and frightening to the child. It is even worse if the anger that is being expressed is their own. Kids with mental health issues respond differently than we do to the same set of circumstances. Perhaps they are struggling to figure out what they need to be. Who they need to be. Maybe the peer group needs them to be a bully, or the clown, or the one that argues with the teachers. The family needs them to be quiet and follow the rules. Kids trying to fit in are changing their behaviors several times a day. A kid with mental health issues may find the stress of these changes too difficult to handle without experiencing a meltdown. If you have witnessed a meltdown you know it can cause a serious disruption of any routine. These meltdowns are a clear signal the child doesn't have the appropriate coping skills in place to deal with the complexities of his life. This is when intervention is appropriate, not for the benefit of the family, parent or teacher, but to benefit the child. In a perfect world, the subtle signs of issues would have been seen in a well child check up by the pediatrician. But largely these signals are missed and not addressed until the afor mentioned meltdown occurs, usually at school. Then the wheels start to turn, though slowly, due to the shortage of mental health practitioners for kids. Perhaps there is some fear on the part of the family. Or embarrassment. Or even worse, they may think the child is doing this on purpose and can be punished into being good. These kids will wait until they can be seen by the first available mental health professional on a non-emergent basis Unfortunately, they usually deteriorate into a critical state requiring they be admitted to a hospital. Kids are sometimes seen in emergency rooms along side massive trauma patients, stabbing victims, gun shots and adult psychiatric patients. There is no pediatric psych E.R in our county. There are 133 available beds in San Antonio for children and adolescents, the majority of which are for kids over the age of 6. The State hospital has 36 beds, for kids 12 or older. There are no child psychiatric beds south of San Antonio, and very few North with the exception of Shoal Creek in Austin and Cedar Crest in Belton. Reportedly Texas has more child psychiatrists than other states, yet Texas kids are missing the mental health care they need. Child psychiatrists are in great demand, but these specially trained doctors are paid less than other specialties. Pediatricians are trying to pick up some of the needs of their clients, but with one doctor seeing 40-50 kids a day, there is little time for a mental health exam. A diagnosis from a child psychiatrist takes more than a 10 minute visit. It takes interviews with the child, the parents and sometimes the teacher . A good diagnosis may take several weeks or longer. But the difference is the child is getting psychiatric care in the meantime to help control the symptoms that are causing the most trouble for the child. Until the leadership in the cities hear from the rest of us that children's mental health should be the priority in our planning of budgeted items, we will continue with kids in E.R's or in jail until the system breaks down completely. By then it may be too late to save our kids. A call to action might be for parent groups to start conversations about submitting a plan to the city leaders that would support a plan funded by private and state funds to create a Crisis Services Unit that would see kids 24/7 and either stabilize them and release or keep them until a bed can be secured in an appropriate hospital setting. We can get millions for bike paths, and park upgrades, but nothing for what our kids need most, healthy minds.
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Sunday, August 7, 2011

God Bless America

Used to, way back when, we started the day with the pledge of allegiance. We learned about the great history of the grand experiment that is the United States of America. Kids knew about where we came from and why we chose to go thousands of miles across an unknown ocean to a land filled with savages and strange animals. The weather was harsh as was the landscape, but we went anyway. What must our kids be thinking as they look around their world? We have lawmakers squabbling over who is to blame for the current problems while ignoring solutions in favor of political capitol. The founding fathers must be turning over in their graves! Everyone needs to re-read the constitution and the Declaration of Independence with the bill of rights. We all need to remember why we are here and talk about that with our kids. We have gotten so far from what we were at the beginning. We need to get back to some of those basic principles if we intend to leave our kids a country and a legacy above and apart from the financial and political strife seen across the globe. It worked then, it can work now. They kids just have to know how to get there. We set the pace and the course. We have to start and then pass it n to them with a road map to follow. etc, etc ,etc. My 10 year old grandson sees Obama through the eyes of a child. He believes the rhetoric. He believes what he hears on TV. He believes the leaders of our country because he does not consider they may not be telling him the truth. They are there because we elected them to lead and manage our issues. Why would they lie?

The media plays a huge part in this. Remember back when Walter Chronkite and those folks were around? There was a plain reporting of the facts, non biased, just the facts. If there was an editorial or commentary, it was clearly noted. Now, there is so much spin on what really happened with sound bites edited to give the story more punch, never mind if it changes the intent of the piece. Again getting back to basics. The basics of our government and our national philosophies, journalism, ethics, business, education, funding and spending.

America can no longer act like the saviour of the world. We need to bring everything back home, reassess our needs and our direction and then go forward again.
Our kids are watching. They are seeing many first time in history moments, and none of are good.

Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Why Teens Use Drugs

Many high school seniors who take pain medications without a prescription do so for reasons besides relieving pain. This is not news. The reasons sited maybe new for parents and teachers. According to a newly released University of Michigan study the top reasons given are tension or stress relief, to get high, to experiment and for pain relief. Many adults feel kids have no reason to be stressed. This finding supports beliefs that teens are under an undue amount of stress and are resorting to quick fixes to cope. Students who said they used the drugs only for pain relief were less likely to report heavy drinking or other drug use than were those who took them for other reasons, according to this study. Additionally, more than seven in every 10 non medical users of prescription opioids motivated by pain relief reported a lifetime history of medical use of prescription opioids. The drugs in question here are such things as oxycodone, codiene, demerol, vicodin, the usual pain relievers. Most students surveyed reported using their own prescriptions they had initially received for pain management. They progressed to securing the drugs from other means such as "borrowing" from adults in their life. Based on this information, it is evident we as advocates for children need to pay closer attention to the amount of stress piled on our children at an early age. Additionally, we need to ask questions of our kids about how they handle stress, what stress feels like to them and offer them coping skills and the ability to practice those skills until they find something healthy that works for them. Check in with them periodically to be sure what they are using to relieve the stress is still effective. Left to their own devices, kids will always go for what works fastest and is easily accessible. That's why self harm is such a popular thing. There is a very old saying that children learn what they live. This is very true and can be seen by the increase in the use of drugs, self harm and sex as a way to deal with stress and tension. Many teens use drugs to get by, to make it through the day. If engaged early, we may be able to avert an addiction that will soon have a disastrous impact upon their lives and the lives of those they touch. Take time to talk to your kids about anxiety, stress, sleep patterns, eating, and the way they decompress after a particularly tough day. Help them by learning what works for them. Oh, and by the way, your ability to model effective and healthy ways to handle stress will say much more than anything you can tell them so take care of your own stress relief as well.

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