Children's Mental Health Prevention and Treatment Center

Don’t wait for children to show up in extreme situations such as self-harm, being tired of school, and unable to socialize properly before you think of looking for a children’s mental health prevention and treatment center. It has never been a “special hospital for troubled children”, but a full-chain public service center covering ordinary children’s emotional guidance, risk screening, clinical disorder intervention, family support and popular science education. It can be used for children who don’t want to go to school at the beginning of school, who are panicking when they have conflicts with classmates, or who are diagnosed with ADHD or depressive disorders and need continuous intervention. You can find it.

Speaking of which, I encountered a pretty typical thing while I was working at the district center two weeks ago: a mother rushed in dragging her third-grade son. When she entered the door, she shouted, "Doctor, please check if this child has ADHD. Can you prescribe some medicine and he will behave?" She said that she had skipped school every day for half a month, smashed textbooks at home, and was beaten and scolded to no avail. When we brought the child to the sand table room to talk alone, we found out that the parents had been secretly divorcing for almost half a year. They hid the quarrels from the children at home, thinking that they were keeping it a secret. In fact, the child had already found the divorce certificate, and thought that it was because he scored 70 points on the last math test that his parents were so angry that they wanted to separate. He was afraid that he could not express it for half a year, so he could only use "losing his temper" to gain attention.

It must be mentioned here that there have always been two different judgments on the priority of child psychological services in the industry: psychiatrists with clinical background emphasize that pathological examination should be done first to avoid mistaking physiologically based problems such as autism spectrum disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder for "naughty children" and "ignorance" that delay diagnosis and treatment.； Consultants and social workers who are deeply involved in developmental psychology pay more attention to the influence of the family system - children's behavioral problems are often the "fever thermometer" of family relationships. The fever is in the child, and the root cause of the disease may be in the entire family. In fact, there is neither right or wrong in either approach. We now conduct a joint assessment meeting when handling each case. We will neither miss clinical symptoms that require medication intervention nor label the child a "sick patient." Just like the little boy just now, he didn't prescribe medication in the end. He just brought his parents over for two family consultations. The two made it clear in front of the child, "Divorce is your parents' problem. It has nothing to do with you. We will always love you." Within three weeks, the child took the initiative to go back to school with his schoolbag on his back.

Don't believe it, there are still many people who have huge misunderstandings about the prevention and treatment center. Last month, a grandma knew that her granddaughter was coming to play sandbox games, and she blocked the door to prevent her from entering. She said, "My granddaughter is fine, but when neighbors saw her going to a place like this, she thought there was a mental illness in our family." Oh, by the way, many people don’t know that in most public children’s mental health prevention and treatment centers, the popular science classes and group activities on the prevention side are free. You can participate by making an appointment on the official account: a mindfulness game for children who have just entered kindergarten and have anxiety about entering kindergarten, and teach them how to say to the teacher “I miss mom”” ； For primary and middle grades, there is an emotion recognition class to prevent school bullying, teaching children to distinguish between "joking" and "being bullied"” ； There is also a separate sexual psychology popularization group for adolescent children. Behind closed doors, everyone can ask questions that they are too embarrassed to tell their parents. ； There is even a "no yelling training camp" for parents. Many parents told us after the class that when they scolded their children, "Can you hurry up?", their children were actually so nervous that their palms became sweaty.

Of course, this does not mean that the current prevention and treatment centers are perfect. To be honest, the gap at the grassroots level is really big: there are 120,000 minors in the permanent population of our district, there are only 3 full-time child psychiatrists, and there are only 11 certified counselors and social workers. There is often a queue for two weeks during popular consultation periods.； The prevention and treatment centers in some places are more medical-oriented and basically only provide clinical diagnosis and treatment. They have no energy to do science popularization and early intervention. Many small emotions are dragged into big problems before they are discovered. ； In other places, social workers provide services and there are no licensed doctors on site. When children with severe depression or self-harm tendencies are encountered, they have to be referred to higher-level hospitals, which inevitably delays time. These are the shortcomings that the entire industry is currently addressing, and there is no rush.

I have been a child psychological social worker for 6 years, and the most common question asked by parents is "Can you improve my child quickly?" In fact, the biggest role of our center in many cases is to provide a platform for everyone to talk properly: children don't have to worry about being scolded by their parents for being "pretentious" when they speak out, and parents don't have to worry about their anxiety being called "making a mountain out of a molehill" by others. Not long ago, a 12-year-old girl was sent to the hospital by her mother for slapping her wrist. After talking for a long time, she said that she had been raped at school. I mentioned this to my mother once before, and my mother said, "Why don't others find someone else if you don't wear such a short skirt?" Later, we took the mother and daughter for three consultations. During the consultation, for the first time in front of the child, the mother said, "It was my fault before. No matter what happens next time, mother will stand by you." The little girl hugged her mother and cried for almost 20 minutes. She never held hands with her again. Last week, she even came over to give us cookies she baked herself.

In fact, there is no need to regard the Children's Mental Health Prevention and Treatment Center as a scourge, nor as a temple that can cure all diseases. It is just a place to shelter children from the wind and rain. If your child comes home one day and stays in the room without talking for a long time, or if you and your child start to argue after a few words, drop by and have a chat with the teacher on duty. It might be more useful than just guessing at home for half a month.