ABSTRACT
What do we mean by the ‘interfaces between child and adult mental health’? One way to illustrate this is through clinical vignettes which raise issues that are probably echoed in services across the country. Consider the following.
A 7-year-old, only child of a single mother develops a sleep disturbance in which he resists going to bed and, once in his bedroom, cries for hours on end for his mother to comfort him. She regularly ends up sleeping in his bed with him as the only way to get him to go to sleep and to allow her to have any peace. She has a history of depressive episodes with suicidal thoughts which have required recurrent admissions to psychiatric wards and, in her more hopeless states of mind, she talks to her son about preparing for a life without her.
