Weighing The Facts: children's mental health links

Thursday, May 6th, is the fifth annual National Children's Mental Health Awareness Day.

Serious emotional and mental health disorders in children are treatable. Treatment is essential to a child's overall health and well-being. Children and their families should not have to face these challenges with shame but with dignity, support, understanding, and acceptance.

The goal of Children's Mental Health Awareness Day is to promote positive mental health from birth to adulthood:

to raise awareness of effective programs for children's mental health needs
to demonstrate how children's mental health initiatives promote positive youth development, recovery, and resilience
to show how children with mental health needs thrive in their communities.

SAMHSA explains:

The overall message of Awareness Day is that children and youth with mental health needs and their families can thrive if provided with the services and supports they need. Children's mental health initiatives promote positive youth development, prevention, recovery, and resilience for children and youth with serious emotional disturbances and their families. It is a goal of children's mental health initiatives to transform the mental health service delivery system for children and youth with mental health needs and their families. In 2010, Awareness Day will mark its 5th anniversary, as well as a first-time focus at the national level on the topic of early childhood. The key message for 2010 is that "positive mental health is essential to a child's healthy development from birth."

By shining a spotlight on early childhood, Awareness Day efforts will encourage the following actions:

Integrate mental health into every environment that impacts child development from birth
Nurture the social and emotional well-being of children from birth
Look for and discuss milestones of a child's social and emotional development from birth