A Multidisciplinary Handbook of Child and Adolescent Mental Health for Front-line Professionals

This handbook covers the essential knowledge required for working with children and adolescents within the mental health field. It provides a thorough discussion of the nature, prevalence, treatment, and management of mental illness in this age group from a balanced biopsychosocial medical model. It considers development, and the mix of protective and perpetuating factors that determine outcomes. Most importantly it offers a step-by-step guide to conducting assessments, and outlines effective treatment approaches for specific presentations.

This book is intended for a UK audience. It discusses important issues relating to tiered service provision and eligibility for treatment, and legal issues relating to mental health and the need for consent. Unfortunately, not all this information is directly transferable to the Australian context. For example, in Australia social workers are one of a number of professions who work in public mental health teams, but they are not included in the current UK Child and Adolescent Mental Health (CAMHS) model (pp. 30–31). Neither is the legal information in Chapter 8 transferable to the Australian context, although the ethical issues relating to adolescents aged 16–18 years are quite helpful.

This book left me wanting a similar book for our Australian context that could be used by all service providers who work with children and youth with mental illness, that demystifies the often complex and confusing nature of our public mental health system, as we have traditional CAMHS in some states for 0–18 years, and Child and Youth Mental Health Services (CYMHS) for 0–25 years in Victoria, and youth friendly services such as headspace. Working out where to refer clients and how to access this system can be confusing and frustrating.

This book is very comprehensive in its explanation of developmental models. This is particularly helpful because in addition to the traditionally taught cognitive, emotional, and moral models of development, it adds social, adolescent and family development, and theory of mind. This expanded view allows more breadth and understanding for conceptualising client presentations, and formulating a diverse range of interventions.

The book categorises mental disorders according to: emotional problems, behavioural problems, neurodevelopmental disorders, self-harm, and mental health disorders (depression, psychosis, bipolar affective disorder, schizophrenia, eating disorders, substance use). This grouping is bizarre and out-of-step with the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM) (American Psychiatric Association, 2013) and the International Classification of Diseases (World Health Organization, 2018). Separating emotional problems, which in this case include anxiety, and behavioural problems, from other mental disorders is stigmatising. It would have been better to give them equal status and legitimacy as mental disorders.

There was no inclusion of information relating to personality disorder, which is now recognised in the DSM-5 as being diagnosable under the age of 18 years. In this book personality and personality traits are concepts for adult mental health (p. 97), as personality is not fully formed prior to 18 years, and they suggest the word temperament should be used instead. However, this conceptualisation is out-of-step with growing research evidence that has shown continuity between childhood temperament and adult personality traits, the emergence of personality disorder in adolescence, and capacity for personality to continue to change into middle age (Chanen, Tackett, & Thompson, 2018).

On the whole, this book is impressive in its current knowledge of best practice and effective interventions, particularly in the fields of psychosis, treatment approach, cultural sensitivity, and health promotion and prevention. The book could have been improved with sections that covered the interface between physical and mental health, and the use of exercise and lifestyle interventions, the importance of good sleep hygiene, and educational and vocational interventions that are designed to improve functional outcomes and promote the achievement of developmental milestones. The section on mindfulness needed to consider the cultural and ethical application of this intervention and provide a solid basis for its use in therapy.

This book is recommended for social workers who work with children and adolescents who experience mental illness, because it offers an accessible framework and basic knowledge of the full breath of the area.