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Matthew Cox COMM 240 Problem Paper
The Increase in Prevalence of Child and Adolescent Mental Health Disorders and how Lingual Development has Played a Role
Too often we give children answers to remember rather than problems to solve. –Roger Lewin As every generation that has come before has said about the succeeding generations, children are our future. Of course this is an obvious statement as one day the current generation will be gone and will be succeeded by their offspring. In seeing this as an obvious fact, it is the responsibility of parents to educate their children in the best way they can. So what is the best way to help a child grow and develop? While the field of child psychology and development is continuously researching topics like this, we can see already that many of the practices parents of today employ in raising their children may have more dire and far-reaching consequences than anyone could have guessed. This paper will first discuss research into the area of children’s psychology and how many new findings are contradicting contemporary beliefs. It will also examine the problems associated with methods formerly believed to be acceptable and then discuss some of the potentially far reaching consequences, such as a dramatic increase in adolescent mental health problems and the effects on society as a whole.
To understand how problems with parenting techniques are affecting children’s development, we must examine these practices along with looking at the mental abilities and capacities of the developing child. Ross Thompson (Thompson, 2006) gives much insight into the mental development of children in his article Conversation and Developing Understanding: Introduction to the Special Issue. He explains that young children have the ability to easily gain understanding into mental states and psychological matters. They quickly begin to understand experiences and psychological process, in themselves, in others, and in to the natural world. Children’s incredible ability to intake information and understanding is helped along by ideas and concepts from conversation, especially with older partners. Conversation adds to a child’s ability to understand new concepts through the structure of language that helps to contribute to new knowledge, especially understanding of complex or intangible concepts. This developing knowledge is enhanced further thru conversation with different perspectives and more knowledgeable individuals. Thompson (Thompson, 2006) further explains that while traditional views of toddler aged children are ones of self-concern and self-interest, it is becoming clearer that young children, at a very early age, begin to comprehend that others’ thoughts and feelings are different from there’s. It is also becoming evident that young children are intensely interested in what others desire and believe.
Research into the mind of children has shown that as toddlers they have the ability to begin to grasp the influence that things like intentions, desires, and feelings have on behavior. By preschool age, they begin to understand more complex concepts such as the way beliefs represent things by nature, understanding how emotions can be aroused, and how to predict other peoples’ behavior based on the way they act and behave. (Harris,2005) Children’s ability to understand emotions is associated with how often parents discuss feelings with their children and the deepness of the conversations content. (Dunn, 2002). The development of conscience is also heavily influenced by the references mothers make to emotions when talking to a child about their past misbehaviors. Research is showing that mothers that are emotionally “power assertive” and that tend to reference rules, rather than emotions, as a consequence of a child's action, tend to have children with lower scores on conscience measures. (Kochanska, Aksan, & Nichols, 2003).
Another important aspect of children’s cognitive development was how easily children gain these psychological understandings. Conclusions drawn from previous research have stated that children have a tremendous ability to understand mental states of people through interactions with others. From these interactions, they begin to construct individual theories of a person’s mental state and how it relates to expressed behaviors. However, new research is changing this perception of children’s development. Carpendale and Lewis (2004) argue that experiences of cooperative social interaction and exposure to talk about mental states are needed in addition to the child’s personal inferences about understanding the mind. This new view is consistent with new research that has focused its attention on the role of language-and the social experiences accompanying language- in young children’s developing understanding of the mind. (Astington & Baird, 2005)
Parents and children engage in a wide range of topics from the past, present, and future. Not only do they discuss every day events but also the critical events in the lives of the child as well. Along with talking about events, they also in engage in conversation during those events as well. The content and the style of these parent-child conversations focus children’s attention on certain features of their shared experience rather than others. The content and quality of these conversations affect the development of understanding as they act like a catalyst for the development of understanding. (Thompson, 2006)
First, the words themselves that are used act as a reference for things that the child cannot quite grasp intellectually. While infants can distinguish emotional expressions before their first birthday, the introduction of language allows children assess and associate emotional behaviors into specific categories like “happy, “sad,” “mad,” etc. It is not just the language they are learning that associates these emotions with words but also the language that they overhear in conversation with adults who give explanations for emotional behavior as well as explanations for natural events they see. We can see through this that words are important not only because of the way they allow the child to categorize invisible psychological and natural events that the child finds interesting, but also because they are the means by which they begin to construct knowledge about these events as well. (Barsh and Wellman, 1995)
As children begin to understand these lingual references to states of the mind and emotion, they develop specific knowledge structures for these events and attribute them to their own inner experiences. Through conversation, they then begin to use these words to share these experiences with others, comparing their representations of the experience with the representations provided by others. (Thompson, 2006)
Another important role of language and conversation is that it directs the attention of the child to specific elements of an event. Directing their focus to specific events, aids in comprehension, memory and understanding. (Ornstein, 2004). Conversation that reminisces helps to develop the child’s retrieval of significant aspects of past experiences. As well as helping to aid in memory development, talk of past events helps the child develop structure and understanding of past events. This holds especially true if the past event was confusing or emotionally stressful to the child. Conversation about future events is also very beneficial to the child's development. It helps them learn how to anticipate a future event and develop predictions about events occurring in the near future. Overall, conversation helps to reconstruct the child’s memory and comprehension in significant ways. (Thompson, 2006)
Harris (Harris & Koenig, 2005) further notes that children are not passive when it comes to listening to language. He points out that children are often eager to listen to adults talk about things that the child finds interesting. Their questions about things like animals, beliefs, or God initiate conversations that help to inform them as they attempt to work this new knowledge into their current understandings. Hudson reports that children’s talk about future events are developed by maternal time references during conversation about the future. This is important because discussions orientated in the future tend to be more linguistically complex than talk about past events, helping to better develop their language development and understanding.
The ways in which conversation contributes to conceptual growth in children differs depending on the context, theme, and purpose of the conversation. For example research shows emotional understanding is developed very well when maternal references to feelings occur in a friendly and relaxed conversation. Likewise, when these emotional references occur during a heated and tense parent-child discussion, these benefits are not shown. This is good evidence to show why early moral socialization of children happens much more readily in discussions of past misbehaviors, versus if it happens during the immediate confrontational situation of disciplining the child. (Thompson, 2006)
So why such an in-depth look at the development of children’s psychological development and how does this relate to societal problem? Such an in depth discussion will help clarify the many possible improvements that should be made in this area, along with the wide range of aspects regarding the issue of proper child development. The social issue stemming from children’s cognitive development becomes clear when we look at the article Social communication Deficits in Conduct Disorder: a Clinical and Community Survey. In it, the authors describe the link between a dramatic increase in child and adolescent mental health issues. They describe an Increasing number of children being referred to Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services because of disruptive behavior. They cite recent reviews on the origins of these conduct problems indicate that the most severe and persistent forms are found predominantly among males with a range of neurodevelopment weaknesses. The authors conducted a study to test the hypothesis that many children who are identified with conduct disorder actually have a primary deficit in everyday language skills. They estimate that the quality and degree of this deficit is similar to children on the autistic spectrum. They proposed that the difficulties may be a major reason for the antisocial behavior in a large number of children who are labeled as conduct disordered. Their results suggested two-thirds of those with conduct disorders had pragmatic language impairments and other behavioral features similar in nature and degree to those of children with autism, independent of their IQ. Their conclusion states that the findings have both theoretical and practical implications. First, they indicate the presence of communicative problems in a sub-group of children in who conduct rather than language had been the major concern. Second, they indicate that severe deficits in practical language abilities and autistic- like behaviors can coexist with psychiatric conditions other than autism, especially in boys. Third, they imply that the management of many disruptive children could profitably be addressed to improving their social and communicative skill deficits. (J. Gilmour, B. Hill, M. Place, and D. Skuse; 2004)
Other studies focusing more on the rising trend of child and adolescent conduct disorders have shown concerning results. Results from studies analyzing trends concerning social conduct issues and problem have shown that over the past 25 years there has been a substantial increase in adolescent conduct problems, regardless of sex, social class, or family types. Individuals with high conduct problems like but not limited to fighting, bullying, and lying, show a poorer prognosis for a range of psychosocial outcomes. Problems that were prevalent in these individuals include increased unemployment, more job dismissals, greater dependence on state benefits and increased homelessness. Results also showed that these individuals also had less stable relationships and were more likely to have children at a young age. As well as social issues, these individuals with conduct issues also expressed increased levels of problems in personal areas such as poor self-rated health, smoking, drinking problems as well as higher tendencies to need help for mental health problems. The study also points out that not only has there been a rise in conduct problems but that the risk associated with these risks has risen as well. These results complement previous studies, showing that conduct issues are associated with a dangerous long-term economic cost to society. (Collishaw, Maughan, Goodman, Pickles; 2004)
In tying these studies together and summing up the article, we can see a correlation between insufficient development of language skills and the prevalence of mental health issues. In the first article we can see how easily a child’s developing mind can be influenced. We saw new interests that have focused attention on the role of language-and the social experiences accompanying language- in young children’s developing understanding of the mind. The initial study discussed earlier showed the wide spectrum of areas in the child’s development that can be affected. The development of language affects the development of emotions, conscience, and development of understanding, perceiving abstract ideas, and memory.
In seeing how wide the range of developmental issues is that could be affected by misuse of language in developing children, the results of the second study published seem quite logical. With the number of mental and conduct issues at the level it is today, the realization that two-thirds of these children may have acquired these disorders through a lack of proper lingual development. With this, there is the realization that many of these problems, through diligent and intense efforts, could be corrected along with the prevention of these disorders in the future. In the third study, we can see how there has been a dramatic increase in the number of child and adolescent disorders, and how these disorders could have potentially drastic consequences, even on the societal level. A rise in adolescent emotional difficulties is likely to have long-term consequences, both with respect to the prevalence of adult affective and anxiety disorders (Lewinsohn, Rohde, Klein, & Seeley, 1999), and also more broadly for a range of psychosocial outcomes (Fergusson & Woodward, 2002).
While this is an issue that could pose many problems, it is one that could be dramatically reduced through consistent effort. A plan would have to cover many aspects to provide a chance for improvement. There would need to be education for parents on how they could provide the child with the best opportunity for an optimal state of mental health. There would also have to be programs to teach others in the community that frequently interact with children. Along with public education on the topic, there needs to be an increase in neurological and psychological research and development of better psychoactive drugs. There has been a long held perception of many mental health issues being taboo. These perceptions have finally began to shift and mental health is being recognized as it should, as an aspect of overall health, as every bit as important as every other aspect of health care. Some would even argue that mental health is an issue that should move to a level of even more importance. Solid reasoning would support this in that unlike many of the largest current health issues like heart disease, which would mostly affect only the individual and close relatives with the illness, mental health has the potential to affect many more individuals as it often produces social and conduct disorders.
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