Adolescent Psychiatric Diagnostic Evaluation - Essay Example

"Adolescent Psychiatric Diagnostic Evaluation" is a wonderful example of a paper on child development. The patient in high School level was reported being in isolation from the family, not eating, reduced body size, and was ever angry and rude to people, including parents. This was observed six months after the death of his father. Clinical screening established that the boy had an anxiety disorder called for intervention. He was prescribed cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) supplemented with physical exercise engagement. The patient's therapeutic cooperation bored positive responses within a month, and progress is promising to regain his initial health and body stature.

Background
Anxiety is a mental disorder described by unusual behavioral changes like fear, avoidance, anger, and seclusion. It has been reported to have a 12-month prevalence of 18% and a lifetime rate of 29%. The study's undertaking is to help identify potential anxiety causes, diagnosis, and treatment, and management measures. Late or failure to recognize the disorder can cause the non-functioning of the individual in daily duties.


Case presentation
The patient presented with weight loss, pale skin, unspeaking, and unfriendly. His father died now living with a mother who is jobless and authoritarian. After losing the father who loved and cared for him, financial constraints and dictatorship caused the mental disorder.
To ascertain the patient's mental disorder, the following guiding questions will be used; Do you have a feeling of stressfulness? If yes, how do you manage it?; Do you often feel bored, irritated, or sad? how do you handle this?; Do you experience disrupted sleep or appetite?; Do you keep thinking of unpleasant past experiences?; Are you so much upset that you sometimes wish you would not be alive or sought to die?; Do you experience chest pains, recurrent abdominal pains, palpitation, breath shortness, dizziness, or nausea?
Screening tools are used to identify the possibilities of one undergoing mental or psychological problems. At the early stages of patient assessment, an M3 checklist or questionnaire will be used for primary mental health symptoms assessment to help concentrate on the patient’s potential mental disorder. For advanced screening, GAD-7, PCL-5, and HAM-A tools will be used to determine the type of anxiety the patient could be exhibiting (Sandy, 2019).
Depending on the patient evaluation outcome, psychological or pharmacological therapy (Frost, 2019) will be prescribed. The psychotherapy helpful in adolescents is cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), which is based on the idea that patients' cognition ability (thoughts), emotions (feelings), and behaviors continuously interact. The ultimate goal is to change the behaviors and cognitions to maintain the mental disorder hence reduce symptoms and improve the patient's functioning ability. Pharmacological interventions will include treatment drugs like selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, serotonin-Norepinephrine Reuptake Inhibitors, fluoxetine, fluvoxamine, Tricyclic Antidepressants, paroxetine, and sertraline.
Family structure can affect the diagnosis and treatment of anxiety, either positively or negatively. Where one or both parents succumbs to death or divorce, the adolescents are vulnerable to physical, emotional, and or sexual abuse (Behere, Basnet & Campbell, 2017). Deaths cause psychological distress and failure to have affectionate family anxiety crop-up. Abused adolescents hardly express themselves, and in the long run, they are hard-hit with mental disorders that eventually disrupt their daily functioning such as schooling, work, and marriage. Certainly, diagnosis and treatment may be unsuccessful. Disconnected family relations increase serotonin in the body biochemistry, which will persist with mental effects that will render the drugs unhelpful. Patients from economically poor families are unable to cater for their medical expenses and livelihood, and their treatment fails.
The patient is under the care of only the mother after the father's death. Before death, the father was the sole breadwinner but now remains the mother who has no permanent job based on her low education level. Thus, the family has been struggling to meet their needs like food, clothing, standard shelter, and schooling. These challenges have affected the patient’s mental health and thus require psychological health interventions.
The patient is in the middle adolescent stage based on 15 years. This is a stage where the members continue to undergo physical, cognitive, sexual, and emotional changes (Allen, B. & Waterman H., 2019). These changes run from puberty, develop romantic relationships, struggle with parents for independence, and brain changes are still taking place. Disruptions of these changes, affect life perceptions, relationships, and mental development.
Parenting is an integrated practice of parents on the leadership and management of their families. There are four key parenting styles: authoritative, authoritarian, permissive, and rejecting-neglecting styles (Smetana, 2017). Out of the four styles, an authoritarian parenting style was observed in the patient's family. A dictatorial form of parenting with middle adolescent children creates rebellion, mistrust, and loss of confidence. As a result, the patient cannot share experiences and so fail to be diagnosed early for treatment enrollment.
The ethics of mental therapy include being aware of the potential impact of the patient's home, school/work, and social environment concerning disorder treatment and maintenance. Therefore the considerations here are; secure a private room or place that will create habitat for the patient cooperation to share information (Kuhn et al., 2017). To start, call in the parent(s) as the teen waits outside to get an overview of the problem and measures already undertaken to salvage the situation. After meeting the parent (s), the child can be called in to share his/her side of the story in the absence of the parent (s). The parent can have a quarter share of the teen information lest the information is used against the teen creating more problems than expected. Before leaving the office, have a joint meeting with them to instill the spirit of family affectation, unity, and responsibility for better health, social, and economic growth.