Choose an area in child mental health. You may work within the topics covered in the course syllabus or you may go beyond the syllabus in choosing a topic.
Discuss the area you have chosen, relying both on course material and on at least one additional resource you have identified. If you are discussing a condition, describe its development and presentation. (8-10 pages)
Discuss a particular person their history, strengths and needs as relevant to social work intervention. (2 pages)
Discuss how the mental health materials you presented earlier help us understand this persons presentation, both developmentally and descriptively. How well do these materials help us account for this persons strengths and needs? If you have discussed DSM 5 material in your opening section, discuss specifically whether/how criteria for the DSM category you discussed are met by this persons presentation. Address any important things about the persons presentation that these materials do not adequately address. (2-3 pages)
Discuss intervention strategies that build on strengths and address needs. Rely on at least two outside sources, which can be taken either from other courses you are enrolled in or from your own literature search. Apply these ideas to the person you discussed above, considering which might be most useful to this person, singly or in combination. (3-5 pages)
Some of you may find it more interesting to choose two child mental health areas to discuss. You would present each and discuss how they interact. After presenting material about a person you would discuss how each perspective would account for the persons development and presentation, and share your view of the strengths and shortcomings of each perspective in this respect. Finally you would discuss intervention from each perspective, and comment on the merits of each.
You may also create an alternative design for this paper, which you must first discuss with me and have approved. The goal is not to follow a required structure but to work with a structure that will allow you to explore a child mental health area in some depth.
This paper is intended to be a substantial assignment and one that you can best address by beginning your work early in the semester and returning to the work often. There is no midterm paper assigned for this course, with the intent of allowing you to apply your full energies to one well-developed final product. You are required to present at least one outside source in your initial discussion of the issue and at least two sources in your intervention section of the paper.
book materials:
Beauchaine, T.P. & Hinshaw, S.P., eds. (2017). Child and adolescent psychopathology. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley and Sons.
Herman, J.L. (1992). Trauma and recovery. New York, NY: Basic Books.
American Psychiatric Association (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-V (DSM-5)
Movie: “Dear Evan Hansen motion picture 2021.
