Diagnosing Children with Psychological Disorders

Diagnosing Children with Psychological Disorders
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Abstract
Over the past few decades, an increasing trend in diagnosing mental health disorders has been seen in children. Notably, these psychiatric disorders are ADHD, ASD, and BPD. This trend is attributed to the overdiagnosis of the disorder secondary to possible issues and misuse of the diagnostic criteria and pressures from the medical societies due to established advocacies. As a result, there is also overtreatment of the cases. This paper aims to discuss and analyze the issues in diagnosing children with mental health conditions and discuss some of the concepts in developmental psychology.
Diagnosing Psychological Disorders in Children: An Introduction
There has been an increasing trend in the prevalence of children diagnosed with psychological disorders over the past five decades based on the data provided by the national health agencies, health insurance companies, and special education programs. Moreover, an increase in the rates of psychoactive medication prescription has also been observed (Merten et al., 2017).
Main Issues and Problems
The first issue is the overdiagnosis of mental health illnesses in children, leading to false epidemics and psychiatric pads. This claim is based on the study of three psychiatric disorders, namely, ADHD, autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and pediatric bipolar disorder (PBD). This can be attributed to the following: 1) The current diagnostic criteria may not reflect the actual disorder for the children. This is because mental illnesses are usually diagnosed using criteria that may change over time. Aside from the criteria, the physician should also consider professional judgment, philosophical investigation, public opinion, practical reasoning, and risk-benefit analysis. An example of the mistakes with the diagnostic criteria is considering homosexuality as a mental disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders-II (DSM-II).; 2) Misdiagnosis can result from poor interpretation of the diagnostic criteria.; 3) The influence of the pharmaceutical industries may have contributed to the increase in the prescription of psychotropic agents to young people.; 4) Diagnostic inflation could be the cause, which results from the establishment of new psychiatric disorders and decreasing the inception of the existing mental disorders with already established diagnostic criteria.; 5) Diagnostic upcoding could increase the number of overdiagnosed children secondary to increased pressures coming from the guardians, especially the parents, of the patients, to make an outright diagnosis of the case. The fear of uncertainty also contributes to this matter (Australian Institute of Family Studies, 2018, pp. 10-12).
The second issue in diagnosing children with mental health problems is overtreatment after confirming the diagnosis. An example of this is the overuse of antidepressant medications. Two factors have been found to contribute to this matter. First, there is an increased screening for depression among the younger population, despite the scientific evidence to support the screening methods. Second, there is a scale-up of the diagnosis of depres...