Are there differences in mental health diagnoses for adults, teens and children?
GTP: An excellent and provocative question. The official answer is: No. The accurate answer is, of course there are. Officially, children and adolescents are diagnosed according to the same criteria in the DSM-IV as are adults. In real life, the psychiatric disorders of childhood and adolescence often appear very different from the same disorders in adulthood. The younger the child, the less differentiated the behavioral symptoms will be. For example, depression in childhood most frequently presents not with sad mood and withdrawal, but with aggressive or delinquent behavior. The most serious shortcoming of the official classification of psychiatric disorders is that it does not recognize these kinds of developmental differences. SHA: What are the diagnoses most often seen in school-age children and are there age, race and/or gender differences? GTP: In our school-based mental health clinics, we often see children who are referred for emotional or behavioral problems, but who turn out
