Psychological Risks and Resilience in Children and Adolescents - Essay Sample

Introduction

At the ages of childhood and adolescence, one faces a lot of psychological challenges since the period usually hosts a lot of uncertainties. Emotional intelligence becomes a hard thing to achieve at an early age. One is likely to experience issues like stress and depression in child and adolescent age brackets. Therefore, young ones must learn how they can deal with mental problems and achieve emotional strength. Adolescents and children need to recover as quickly as possible from psychological issues that often face them. This paper chronologically reviews various literature that has discussed the subject.

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Researchers revealed that the primary psychological issue that children and adolescents face is stress. Researchers argued that children are usually at a high chance of developing antisocial behavior, mostly due to very demanding homework (Haggerty et al., 1996). The author said that initially, mental health was to help in the treatment of children and adults who were at risk of stress because they were prone to stress causes. However, with time the mental health clinic had to shift its focus to children and adolescents in families that live with stress (Haggerty et al., 1996).

The problem of stress in children and adolescents requires the intervention of psychiatrists. Children and adolescents need to be taken through counseling sessions to make them more resilient (Haggerty et al., 1996). The authors prescribed enough guidance and counseling for the youths who are at high risk of stress because of the mental problems among teenagers very significantly affect them. The authors were right in proposing advice for the depressed and stressed children and adolescents since these situations require external help.

However, researchers looked at the effectiveness of the psychiatry processes for the children. The researchers asked whether the procedure helps children and adolescents be more resilient (Haggerty et al., 1996). The authors recommended environmental support as a solution for children and adolescents with stress and other psychological issues. The authors explained that through environmental intervention, it is easy to solve anxiety, depression, and other mental disorders among children and adolescents. When the authors said environmental solutions could solve psychological problems, they meant that the cause and effect of depression and stress are easy to reverse. The reversibility of the psychological issues is because these issues emerge due to the environment's condition, and only the context can solve them.

According to (Silk et al., 2007) resilience is the continuous process through which one finds solutions to psychological issues by making the subject to adapt positively. Therefore, the resilience process makes it possible for people under stress and depression to cope positively with their environment. The authors further added that about 8% of children and 18% of adolescents suffer from depression. The biggest point of concern is that a significant number of children and adolescents who suffer from depression attempt suicide (Silk et al., 2007). The authors added that children and adolescents get more antisocial when they suffer from mental disorders.

It is imperative to prevent mental disorders in the first stages since they have nasty effects on children and adolescents (Silk et al., 2007). The authors provided various insights on the effectiveness of multiple measures that one can take to control mental issues among young individuals. (Cacioppo et al., 2000; Greenough, Black, & Wallace, 1987) suggested that the environment that one finds themselves in determines their mental responsiveness as cited by (Silk et al., 2007). For instance, if the environment is favorable for a child under depression, they would find it easy to achieve resilience. If the child or adolescent finds themselves it an unfavorable condition, making resilience is most likely to be impossible.

Therefore, the child managers need to check how they handle the children, for it significantly determines their ability to develop cognitive health (Silk et al., 2007). A good parent-child or teacher-student relationship makes young individuals develop resilience or avoid the risk of depression. According to (Silk et al., 2007), it is vital to have a third party's intervention to help the children achieve resilience. Additionally, moderation of the resilience process by incorporating various measures to achieve resilience helps much to solve depression is a useful measure (Silk et al., 2007).

The authors gave a reasonable explanation of the possible solutions to psychological issues among children. Achieving resilience for a child or an adolescent indeed requires both inputs of a third party and environment modulation. If we can make a child's environment favorable, it will be easy for them to be free of depression and stress.

Researchers experimented on the conflict as a reason why children and adolescents suffer depression. The study showed that among factors that contribute to psychological issues, age, gender, and conflict were on the top of the list (Tol et al., 2013). The article concluded that in developing solutions to mental issues, people should adopt scientific methods rather than conventional theories. According to (Batniji, van Ommeren & Saraceno, 2006; Tol et al., 2010b), armed conflicts have a significant effect on the psychological condition of children and adolescents as cited in (Tol et al., 2013).

Exposure to factors like war, famine, hunger, poverty, and marginalization have a significant influence on children and adolescents (Tol et al., 2013). However, there are different levels of causes of stress and depression and stress among children. The first level of mental health determiners is individual factors, including personal issues that might make the school-level children depressed. The family environment makes the second level determinants and consists of the relationship between the child and parent. Another level of cognitive health influencing factors among low-aged individuals is peer factors (Tol et al., 2013). The way other children and adolescents behave substantially determine their mental responsiveness.

The last level of child mental health determining factors is the community-level variants. The environment that the community offers for the adolescent determines whether they will be stressed (Tol et al., 2013). Some background factors make the children develop resilience, while others make it their stress and depression heightened.

To improve children's and adolescent's mental health, therefore, there is a need to check on the various level of the factors that influence their cognitive well-being (Tol et al., 2013). once one knows the factors that contribute to cognitive issues among those levels of factors, it becomes easy to help the adolescents achieve resilience.

Although they presented a good explanation of the causes of stress and depression among adolescents, Tol and the other authors did not answer the issues. After discussing the causes and factors that result in mental health issues, the authors could have proposed a solution.

The leading causes of mental health among children and adolescents include attention deficits, psychological disturbances, and lack of motivation and undesirable moods (Korne, 2016). The researcher used random and non-random methods to search for traits of school-age children and adolescents. The author, however, found out that between 10-20% of children suffer from the above risks. The mental issues brought about learning disorders to children such as dyscalculia, which makes some children even to repeat some grades (Korne, 2016). The psychological problems also cause some serious academic problems among children like truancy and school dropout (Korne, 2016). Therefore, the author explains why it is crucial to find solutions to mental issues in good time to facilitate child education.

The school has the role of supporting the children and adolescents morally to ensure that they achieve resilience since they spend much of their time getting an education (Korne, 2016). Learning is an activity that requires a high level of application of cognitive skills, and it may make a student get stress. The school environment should, therefore, be positive to make school children become resilient and avoid chances of depression (Korne, 2016).

Teachers, therefore, need to be very observant to notice any time when a child or adolescent gets a cognitive issue and help them. Among the things for the teacher to check is how the children socialize among themselves since students with mental disorders may be antisocial (Korne, 2016). The teacher should also check the rate of confidence that the children have and try to help anytime they notice that it is unusually low (Korne, 2016). cases of stubbornness, surprisingly low academic performance, and absenteeism among the children also call into the teachers to probe more on the psychological health of the child(Korne, 2016).

The author presented the mental issues that children might suffer from in a very organized way. The article clearly shows the problems their causes and mitigation measures that teachers can take to make the children more resilient. However, Korne addressed the issues that might affect the mental health of the children and in school only. The research could have also covered other areas like the community and home environment.

During adolescence, there are so many cases of depression and stress. The high frequency of mental disorders among children and youths is responsible for high suicide (Wisk, Levy, and Weitzman, 2019). Reports show that about 10% of adolescents suffer from either stress or depression. Adolescents are also highly prone to issues such as defiance, high opposition, and anxiety. Therefore, adolescents must undergo psychotherapy to become more resilient in solving these emotional issues (Wisk, Levy, and Weitzman, 2019).

Levy said that children and adults greatly suffer from depression in the form of mood variations. Most of the time, adolescents get out of the mood and therefore suffer from depression. Another reason why adolescents get depression is that they are at high chances of suffering loss and often get disappointment (Wisk, Levy, and Weitzman, 2019). The author was right as it is practical that the young children and adolescents are at a high risk of suffering mental issues. However, the author did not propose solutions for the emotional challenges among children and adolescents.

References

Batniji, R., Van Ommeren, M. and Saraceno, B., 2006. Mental and social health in disasters: Relating qualitative social science research and the Sphere standard. Social Science & Medicine, [online] 62(8), pp.1853-1864. Available at: <https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2005.08.050>.

Cacioppo, J., Berntson, G., Sheridan, J. and McClintock, M., 2000. Multilevel integrative analyses of human behavior: Social neuroscience and the complementing nature of social and biological approaches. Psychological Bulletin, [online] 126(6), pp.829-843. Available at: http://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.126.6.829.

Greenough, W., Black, J. and Wallace, C., 1987. Experience and Brain Development. Child Development, [online] 58(3), p.539. Available at: <http://doi.org/10.2307/1130197>.

Haggerty, R. J., Garmezy, N., Sherrod, L. R., & Rutter, M. (Eds.). (1996). Stress, risk, and resilience in children and adolescents: Processes, mechanisms, and interventions. Cambridge University Press.

Schulte-Korne, G., 2016. Mental Health Problems in a School S...