72 | Understanding Mental Health Assessments for Children & Youth

So we use the model of biopsychosocial model.

So our assessments include biological factors, psychological factors, and social factors.

And these factors help us get a clear picture, a broader scope, broader canvas to look at the mental illness in all corners.

So there are three aspects.

So I can explain it further.

The biological aspects of this, for example, the family diseases, family issues, hereditary component of it.

So if you have a family history of bipolar disorder, family history of depression, we wanted to know about that.

So the biological, the medical illnesses, certain medical illnesses causes certain types of medical and mental health issues in children.

So we wanted to note that and we want to capture that part.

And then on the psychological factors, trauma, number one, and anxiety, the bullying issues and parental conflicts, chaotic environments, financial hardships, things like that we wanted to know.

Well, what you're describing is a very intensive, very elaborate assessment process with a lot of variables.

I would love now for you to talk a little bit about why it's so important to get this information, why this diagnosis that you're going to come to, whether it's depression or anxiety or whether the child has autism.

if the child is presenting with certain symptoms, a lot of people just say, treat the symptoms.

You know, if the pill works, the pill works.

Can you talk a little bit about that? Why it's so important to get the diagnosis right and why it's so important to have all of this information to allow you to come to an accurate diagnosis?

Majority of the misdiagnosis leads to bad medication trials.

And the diagnosis is very important because diagnosis comes with a treatment protocol.

Each diagnosis has a treatment protocol.

So if you don't get the diagnosis right, you are going to be shooting in the air blindly.

And that means that you're over-medicating or or wrongly medicating the child.

So it is very important.

And sometimes you don't even need medication.

Most cases you don't actually need medication if you look at it closely.

So in my book, I mentioned three cases.

The first case was a child we were seeing during our fellowship And the child presented with severely ADHD child, couldn't sit still, couldn't engage, was just all over the place.