ABSTRACT
After considering some key issues in child and adolescent mental health child and adolescent mental health (CAMH) practice, this chapter explores how a psychosocial perspective can help social workers and allied professionals support the mental health and well-being of children and young people worldwide. The stigmatizing and ‘othering’ effects of the diagnostic labelling process experienced by users of adult mental health services are also evident in CAMH services. A strictly biomedical approach to CAMH also ignores the influence of the social world. No parallel movement exists within CAMH; hence, practitioners, advocates and researchers will need to work with children and young people in age-appropriate ways to undertake research and build theories that take account of child and adolescent viewpoints. The objective status of the external world of particular relevance to CAMH practice is age, impacting on understandings of childhood, adolescence and mental health. Cognitive behavioural therapy is often the treatment of choice for anxiety and depressive disorders in CAMH.
