The Research and Training Center for Children’s Mental Health: Systems of Care – Since the publication of the Child and Adolescent Service System Program (CASSP) principles two decades ago (Stroul & Friedman, 1986), parent-professional collaboration has been a core value of the children’s mental health system. Despite general agreement that behavioral health services for […]

The Anthropology of Twice Exceptionality – Some anthropologists and psychologists suggest that the ADD/ADHD arrangement of the prefrontal cortex may have been an evolutionary advantage 20,000 years ago when humans had a greater need to respond rapidly to stimuli in the environment and to consider creative or non-linear approaches to solving problems.

Ten Principles of the Wraparound process – Family voice and choice. Family and youth/child perspectives are intentionally elicited and prioritized during all phases of the wraparound process. Planning is grounded in family members’ perspective, and the team strives to provide options and choices such that the plan reflects family values and preferences.

Systematic violations of patients’ rights and safety: Forced medication of a cohort of 30 patients – We assessed the records for 30 consecutive patients who had appealed decisions about forced medication with antipsychotics to the Psychiatric Appeals Board in Denmark. In all 21 cases where there was information about the effects of previous drugs, […]

Summary of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child – The Convention defines a ‘child’ as a person below age 18, unless the laws of a particular country set a younger age limit. The Convention applies to all children, regardless of gender, race, ethnicity, culture, religion, family status, or ability.  Governments are […]

Social Injustice and Public Health – This book defines social injustice as the denial or violation of economic, sociocultural, political, civil, or human rights of specific populations or groups in society. These groups are socially defined in terms of racial or ethnic status, language, country of origin, socioeconomic status, age, gender, sexual orientation or […]

Psychiatrised Children and their Rights: Starting the Conversation – The rights of children diagnosed with psychiatric disorders are a neglected area in the field of childhood studies and the sociology of childhood. Although children’s rights scholars have demonstrated a commitment to documenting, supporting and researching the needs of marginalised children through the discourse of […]

Psychiatrised childhoods – ‘Psychiatrisation’ describes the process by which an ever-expanding assemblage of human life experiences have come to be observed, understood, enacted and acted upon through the language, theories, technologies and institutional practices of Western biomedical psychiatry. Ever since the medical profession seized its opportunity to profit in the ‘mad trade’ during the […]

Pediatric bipolar disorder: An object of study in the creation of an illness – In the past decade bipolar disorder in children has been diagnosed with rapidly increasing frequency in North America, despite a century of psychiatric consensus that manic-depressive illness rarely had its onset before adolescence. This emergence has happened against a background […]