Minding Our Children’s Minds

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http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/streams-of-consciousness/2012/08/20/minding-our-childrens-minds/



One of the toughest parts of raising children is helping them leap the emotional and intellectual hurdles of life. As parents, we try to ease their pain when friends snub them. We console them when their fears keep them awake at night. We scold them when they behave badly, and counsel them after they forget their homework or lose their cell phone.

But most of us have no idea what we are doing. The frustration from being unable to solve a child’s emotional problems or mental lapses is greater the more out-of-the-ordinary those problems seem to be. School counselors can address some issues, pediatricians others, but true experts in our children’s mental health and development are hard to find. How do we nurture our children’s brains and how do we know when they in trouble and need professional help?

In an ordinary-looking Park Avenue office tower in New York City, an extraordinary cluster of professionals are working to understand, improve and advise the rest of us about the mental health of our children. The Child Mind Institute, founded just three years ago, is the only nonprofit organization in the U.S. dedicated solely to children’s mental health. Their mission includes diagnosing and finding better treatments for childhood psychiatric and learning disorders, gaining an improved understanding of healthy brain development, and helping families deal with issues ranging from school transitions to serious anxiety disorders and behavior problems.

Our kids need help. According to the Institute’s website, more than 15 million children in America have psychiatric disorders and at least half of them will never receive treatment. Lots of other children, no doubt, have psychological troubles that may fall short of a disorder but that parents do not know how to handle.