Treatment of severely emotionally disturbed children in a community

The paper has discussed the development of treatment services for severely emotionally disturbed children by an outpatient Mental Health Clinic adopting an approach which may be illustrated by such modern key-words as ‘Community Psychiatry’, ‘Total approach’, ‘Therapy in Crisis’ and ‘Family Therapy’. Basically, the approach we used has included: 1. The setting up of a special educational program for the child in close collaboration with school authorities. The details of such a program will vary with local legislation. 2. A program of intensive psychiatric treatment or play therapy with the child and with the parents individually, and in groups. 3. A program of instruction or counselling the parents in how to meet the special needs and problems in caring for their ‘exceptional’ child. This counselling was conducted on a group basis. 4. The intelligent but aggressive use of all other resources within the community, which might be able and willing to structure themselves to meet the child's needs. We do not pretend that we have offered ideal therapy. We do want to suggest that the lack of facilities for treatment of this psychiatric category, which exists almost everywhere, gives us no excuse to despair or give up. We submit that it is possible to offer a very real help in these cases by the intelligent and aggressive use of all the resources existing within the Community. The nature of the available facilities will vary but almost everywhere there are resources which are able and willing to structure themselves to meet some of the child's needs, if encouraged to do so. The Community Psychiatric Clinic is in a unique position to encourage and develop this.