Stress related conditions

What are these conditions?

Stress is a part of daily life and everybody tends to react to it in different ways. Stressful events are challenging, but they give us a chance to learn important ways to cope.

In today’s world, with an ever-increasing demands on children and adults alike, sometimes stress can go out of hand and manifest in the form of emotional and behavioral symptoms.

It is normal for stress to cause a child to be upset. To see if someone needs professional help to deal with these symptoms, it is important to compare the child’s current response against his/her long-term response to stress. If he or she doesn’t get better say within a month or so or if the child has severe reactions, it would be useful to seek professional care.

What are the common symptoms?

• Social withdrawal, or fearful behavior toward things your child normally is not afraidof
• Returning to behaviors more common in younger children, such as bed-wetting, which the child hasn’t had for along time
• Signs of being upset, such as sadness or tearfulness
• Signs of self-destructive behavior, such as head-banging, or a tendency to get hurt often
• Repeated thoughts of death
• Others- different children can manifest it in different ways. If you find anything unusual in his/ her behavior, it could be useful to talk to the doctor.

How is the assessment done?

Before diagnosing any stress related condition, a thorough assessment is done to rule out other possiblecauses for your child’s behavior. Detailed information is collected about how each and every problem unfolded through the years. We want to know how the client and his/her family got to their current states. We inquire into the whole range of frequently co-occurring conditions. We go over each diagnosis, explaining the etiology of each issue. Sometimes we may have to request for psychological testing to do a comprehensive assessment. The rationale of any such testing is discussed with the client and the family members.Other additional measures are used depending upon the needs of the person.

Very young children often cannot express their thoughts and feelings, so making a diagnosis can be challenging. It is important that the professional dealing with such children has sufficient training and experience in dealing with young kids.

What are the effective treatments for stress related problems?

The proven therapies are psychotherapeutic interventions (“talk therapies”) with or without medications. Medications can be prescribed and monitored for these difficulties by a qualified and trained psychiatrist after discussing it with the family members.

How should clients prepare for the visit?

Please bring:

• Copies of any psychological/ educational testing/ radiological scan.
• Copies of any medical assessments.