Infants need mental health checks .
tenth of two to five-year-olds have a serious psychiatric illness, yet most cases are being missed, warn experts.
The problems go beyond tantrums and bad behaviour and impact negatively on all aspects of an infant’s life, the Institute of Psychiatry will hear.
And failure to spot and treat these conditions early is causing unnecessary distress and suffering.
Mental health services need to be geared towards very young children as a matter of urgency, they said.
The news comes as a survey of 1,000 young people aged 12-19 by The Priory Group finds as many as one in five teenagers has considered or actually harmed themselves purposefully because of feelings of failure and social inadequacy.
How about a “treatment” whereby kids actually have reasonable lives, involving real activities that have some connection to the adult world, instead of sitting in a room being lectured at by someone who has total control over them for no obvious reason, and then coming home and sitting in a room watching moving images/sounds that have no integration with the physical reality around them, on a screen that occupies a twentieth of the kid’s visual field?
But no, “treatment” in this context means “force the kid to adjust to life in the inherently toxic environment imposed by modernity” not “fix the environment”.
I’m not bitter. Really.
Comment by Karl Fogel — December 5, 2005 @ 10:17 am