C h a p t e r 1 Conceptual Models and Their Relevance to Assessment and Intervention

Abstract

Mental health professionals come into contact with children displaying a broad range of cognitive, behavioral, and emotional problems. A child's difficulties may be concentrated in any one of these areas or encompass several or all of them. For example, some children show deficits in intellectual and adaptive functioning to the degree that they are considered mentally retarded. Some display stereotypic or ritualistic behaviors and such severe impairments in language and social related-ness that they are diagnosed as autistic or as displaying some other type of perva-sive developmental disorder. It is not uncommon to see children who are unable to function effectively due to phobias, heightened levels of anxiety, depression, or problems in socialization, all of which may result in considerable distress. Still other children have difficulties that can be distinguished from these in that their problems bring them into continued conflict with their environments. Included here are conduct disorders, which may involve excessive aggressive and antisocial behavior as well as the problem of hyperactivity. Other children display multiple and varied psychological/behavioral difficulties as a result of experiencing neglect, physical or sexual abuse, or stressors such as ongoing family violence. Additionally, there is a range of other, less serious, difficulties that are frequently experienced by children during the process of development. These include prob-lems in toilet training, noncompliance, temper tantrums, and sibling rivalry, to name but a few. Although common, and time limited if handled adaptively, these rather frequent developmental difficulties can become significant parent manage-ment problems requiring professional assistance. M05_MONC6663_01_CUS_C05.indd 427 15/04/2011 08:24 2 C h a p t e r 1 Although the nature and causes of adult psychopathology have been studied extensively and with fruitful results, knowledge of childhood disorders has lagged far behind. For example, it is only recently that comprehensive systems for the classification of childhood disorders have appeared (American Psychiatric Associ-ation, 1980, 1987, 1994) and it is only within the past 25 years or so that serious research into many forms of child psychopathology has even begun. Likewise, child treatment research has been no match, either in quantity or quality, with that related to adult treatment (Kazdin, 1990, 1993). It is not entirely clear why research on child psychopathology and treatment has lagged behind research on adults, but a number of complex factors have been suggested. These include the inferior status historically accorded to children by society; funding patterns that have, at least in the past, favored the training of men-tal health professionals for working with adults rather than children; and the fact that federal funding for mental health research has, until recently, tended to favor adult-oriented studies. Historically, this has resulted in views of childhood prob-lems being shaped by prevailing models of adult psychopathology and the devel-opment of child assessment and treatment methods that have often represented little more than downward extensions of procedures used in working with older individuals. This emphasis on adults has also resulted in clinicians frequently ignoring important developmental factors that must be taken into account in order to adequately understand the nature of childhood problems and to plan effective intervention strategies. Despite the low priority given to developmental psychopathology research in years past, things are changing. In the past 15 to 20 years, there has been a dramatic increase in interest in issues related to children. With this has come a greater awareness of the psychological problems of childhood and how they differ from those of adults, and more research has been devoted to the causes and correlates of childhood disorders. These advances are well documented in numerous authored texts and edited volumes that consider research in various areas of child