Mental Illness in Education
Posted by PLB Registrar · Leave a Comment
Mental illnesses are neurobiological.
A child with a mental illness has a chemical disturbance in their brain that controls their behavior and undermines their ability to deal with their world.
Identifying when behavior symptoms represent a mental illness (brain disorder) is the issue. For example, is a child who is “spinning out of control” a candidate for therapy, or does the behavior require close psychiatric supervision and treatment?
This is a call only for a qualified child psychiatrist to make.
Medicating a child whose problems can be effectively remedied by therapy alone is as clinically misguided as denying medication to a child whose condition cannot improve without it.
From Professional Learning Board’s online continuing education course for teachers: Recognizing Early-onset Mental Health Disorders in Children
