The Mental Health of Children and Adolescents

Around the world, a vast number of children and adolescents suffer from mental and neurological disorders and only a small proportion of them receive adequate care. This is so in both developing and developed countries. The need to raise awareness about this problem and provide specific advice regarding their prevention and treatment was identified as a priority for the World Psychiatric Association by Professor Ahmed Okasha during his Presidency of the Association and resulted in the creation of his Presidential Programme on Child Mental Health. This book presents some of the fruits of this programme and constitutes a global call to action for mental health workers and policy makers. The book brings together information on the burden of mental disorders in childhood and adolescence with methods of raising public awareness of these problems. It also describes therapeutic and preventive interventions that could diminish them. It then presents the results of field studies in Brazil, Egypt and Russia documenting the effectiveness of interventions to prevent school dropout in those three very different countries. With its emphasis on practical guidance for the development of interventions to prevent or treat child and adolescent mental health, the book provides much-needed information of direct interest to health professionals and the many others involved in the provision of health care to children and adolescents in both the developing and the developed countries.