Here's a non-medical example: Let's say that you are looking for a payment that you know you made sometime 2-4 years ago from your bank account. (I don't know, maybe the insurance company want to know how much you bought your laptop for. Just go with the example please.) You download the last five years of bank statement from the website and start trawling through for the money that you know that you paid to Amazon for the laptop. Well stop that. There is a much easier way. Press the Ctrl and F keys and then type 'Amazon' in the box. Hit enter and watch the magic begin. Using this witchcraft you can find what you are looking for instantly.
Here's a medical example of how I use this function all the time. Go to the NICE guideline for gastroenteritis in children. Download the full guideline, not the summary. Now read it until you find the evidence statement for how the guideline group formulated its decision regarding use of loperamide. No, don't do that. The document is over 200 pages long. Instead use Ctrl and F to start your search, then move on using the arrows (or 'next') until you are where you want to be.
This little trick works for word documents, spreadsheets and anything else. My favourite trick is to use it on a webpage to find something that I can’t see (like unsubscribe). Since I was shown how to do this, it has made so many things much easier. What is amazing to me is that not everyone knows about it.
I don't know what it is like in the rest of the world, but trying to help a child with a mental health problem in the UK can be a lot like trying to find something in a 200 page document. Primary care clinicians can put a lot of work into trying to help children and young people (CYP) with mental health problems and it can feel like we never get anywhere. Recently, a child psychiatrist told me a few things that helped to make a lot of sense of these problems and how to help CYP with them, including how to get your referral to the Child and Adolescent Mental Health Services (CAMHS) to get the most appropriate response.
What he told me all made perfect sense. So I thought you might like to have me share his beautiful and simple insights into child and adolescent mental health problems.
1 - There are usually three factors which lead to children and young people's mental health problems
One of these factors is the child's genetic predisposition. You can't do anything about that but it is still useful information.
The next factor is the child's environment. Note that the weight of the domains of a child's environment change as they grow. For example, the importance of different domains for a 4 year old might look like this:
Then as a child becomes more independent, the importance of each domains changes.
The third factor is a trigger. This brings the intrinsic into contact with the extrinsic factors, precipitating the mental health problem.
2 – Every Child needs an anchor
Children and young people usually have at least one functional and dependable adult in their lives who they can rely on to give them consistency and who will make the CYP feel that they are worthwhile individuals. A child who never has one of these people in their lives is unlikely to escape mental health disorders. A child who loses their anchor is at high risk of developing a problem. Ask, “Who is the most important person in this child’s life?” If they used to rely on their grandmother who has recently died, this is very important information.
3 – Children and Young People get different mental health problems at different ages
It’s fairly obvious to say that but it does help you when it comes to assessing a problem. When we are deciding whether something is a mental health problem in the first place, our first question should be, “Is what is happening normal for this age group?”
So what problems do CYP get at different stages? They get mental health disorders which fit their stage of psychosocial development. Young children tend to get behavioural problems and neurodevelopmental disorders (oppositional defiance disorder, attention deficit disorder, separation anxiety disorder). Older children get problems that are related to their transition from child to adolescent (anxiety and self harming). The top end of the CYP age group (in the UK this goes up to 18 years old) will get the beginnings of adult mental health disorders.
Knowing that something is abnormal doesn’t tell you how significant the problem is. What tell you the answer to this is the same thing that almost always tells you about how significant a problem is in paediatrics: function. So, the next question is, “How does this problem impact on the child’s ability to do the things that they want to do or should be able to do?”
And there you have it: your child psychiatry equivalent of the ‘find’ function. A little understanding goes a long way when it comes to assessing and referring CYP with mental health problems. Knowing what to ask always brings the best answers. The answers to these questions just happen to be what a CAMHS consultant needs to see in a referral letter. By including all of this information, we maximise that consultant’s ability to prioritise you patient. Sound’s good eh? So here they are again:
OK, so it’s hardly a keystroke, but considering that we are talking about one of the most complicated problems that we will see in our work, a five question model for getting what you need is pretty good going.
Edward Snelson
Impulsive clinician with a short attention span
@sailordoctor
Acknowledgement - Huge thanks to Girish Vaidya (@DrGirishPsych) who has helped me to understand the core principles of child mental health. His ability to make the complex simple is a real gift.
