Children With Multiple Mental Health Challenges: An Integrated Approach to Intervention

Mental health practitioners who work with children are often confronted with complex, difficult-to-treat mental health issues that do not respond to conventional methods of psychotherapy. These children have a web of multiple impairments that are comprised not just of emotional and behavioral issues but also learning and other cognitive disorders. with Multi-Challenged Children presents an innovative, evidence-based approach to understanding and treating this difficult population that integrates the childs development and functioning into diagnosis and treatment. It does not rely on diagnostic categories alone, but explores the functioning of children in several dimensions of development and considers multiple levels of influence. This approach focuses on underlying mechanisms that cut across diagnoses such as executive functions and emotion regulations.

The book builds on an individualized, integrated approach to present a variety of evidence-based strategies for working with children with multiple challenges. It considers children from preschool age to adolescence who present with a number of severe difficulties that may include extreme aggression, oppositional defiant behavior, significant anxiety and depression, cognitive and academic challenges, delays in speech and language, problems with attention and concentration, sensory integration problems, and symptoms of the effects of unresolved trauma. The treatment strategies that are developed can be used by various specialists who work within the intervention team as well as by parents in the home and teachers in day care facilities and schools. Canadian author Landy is recognized in the United States for her innovative parenting program, Pathways to Competence, that has been adopted by the American Academy of Pediatrics in parts of California and Florida.

• Presents an innovative approach to working with children with multiple disorders, who are often the most challenging cases for clinicians
• Moves beyond standard recipes for treatment planning to encompass developmental-including social and biological factors-and functional aspects of working with children
• Includes case studies as well as detailed treatment plans
• Offers treatment strategies that can be reinforced by use within the intervention team, at school, and at home