Late in 1999, the Office of the Surgeon General of the United States published its first-ever report on the state of America’s mental health. The report surveyed the depth and breadth of mental illness in America and also explored what Americans tend to do when they suffer from emotional and psychological distress.    
 
What many readers found astounding in the Surgeon General’s report was the finding that during any given one-year period, about one in five of America’s children and adolescents can be found to display the signs and symptoms of a DSM-IV Disorder.  According to the report, while mental disorders appear in children and adolescents in families of all social backgrounds, the youngsters who are at greatest risk are those who endure physical disorders, intellectual disabilities, low birth weight, families with a history of mental disorders and substance abuse, multigenerational poverty, and caregiver separation or abuse and neglect.  

As one might expect, the major settings for recognition and resolution of mental illness in America’s children and adolescents remain the school and primary care physician’s office.  Yet, the Surgeon General’s report highlighted certain “best practices” for treating our youngsters’ mental health needs:  “The multiple problems associated with ‘serious emotional disturbance’ in children and adolescents are best addressed with a ‘systems’ approach in which multiple service sectors work in an organized, collaborative way.” 

(http://www.surgeongeneral.gov/Library?MentalHealth/chapter3/conc3.html)

In South Jersey Healthcare, the “systems approach” described by the Surgeon General comes to life in the Child & Adolescent Partial Care Programs at Bridgeton and Elmer Hospital.  In these programs, we seek to establish and nurture collaborative dialogues among the “multiple service sectors” involved in the lives of the children and adolescents who come to us for care.  We gather input on the mental health needs of our young clients from teachers, school social workers and nurses, physicians, outpatient therapists, case managers, religious representatives, and others.  This input helps us establish our own treatment goals for our clients, and more importantly helps us to address the deeper and more far reaching concerns of every client’s most important system, her or his family.

In Child & Adolescent Partial Care, our primary curiosity is not “what has a child been through?” as much as it is “what internal and external resources are available to this child to help him/her access new pathways to healthy development?”  We want our clients and their families to find these pathways in their homes, schools, communities, and networks of social support. 

Finding new pathways to development demands much of our clients and families:  psychotherapy, art therapy and family therapy sessions are often intense; school contacts sometimes precipitate bad moods and surface family tensions; communication problems between group members arise in ways that often replicate communication problems at home.  Yet, the emotional and behavioral changes that can result from facing the demands of our program are the same changes that can help our clients and their families face the troubles of life.

To find out more about the Child & Adolescent Partial Care Programs and Guidelines call
us at 856-575-4195 at SJH Bridgeton Health Center or at 856-363-1196 at SJH Elmer Hospital.