Therapy for Pediatric Clients With Mood Disorders – Case Study of 13-year-old Kara

Case Study of 13-year-old Kara

Mood disorders can impact every facet of a child’s life, making the most basic activities difficult for clients and their families. This was the case for 13-year-old Kara, who was struggling at home and at school. For more than 8 years, Kara suffered from temper tantrums, impulsiveness, inappropriate behavior, difficulty in judgment, and sleep issues. As a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner working with pediatric clients, you must be able to assess whether these symptoms are caused by psychological, social, or underlying growth and development issues. You must then be able recommend appropriate therapies.

Therapy for Pediatric Clients With Mood Disorders – Case Study Of Kara

This paper focusses on identifying the psychological, social and developmental issues affecting young children. The paper is based on a case study of a 13-year-old child by the name Kara. According to the case, Kara has been suffering from impulsiveness, temper tantrums, inappropriate behavior, sleep issues and difficulties in making a proper judgment. Also, the case reveals that her behaviors resulted to problems both at home and in school. This paper will assess  whether the child’s problems are caused by social, psychological development and growth issues in the teenager.

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Psychosocial development issues in Kara

The social and psychological development of Kara is formed by the way she interacted with her social influences, maturity levels especially as she entered teenage hood and her representation of the social world as being able to stand for herself.  When this interaction happens, there would definitely be a lot of influence in the significant relationships, personality growth, social understanding and the way that they are able to become emotionally competent socially and psychologically as they enter teenage-hood (Dever, 2016). With regard to the above case,  it will be important to understand the development elements of Kara.

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First is the social context in which the teenager has grown up in; this will especially look at the relationships that were able to nurture a sense of feeling secure within a group and those that made her feel uncomfortable. It also looks that the social relationships that provided her with guidance and knowledge in different perspective (S.S.Gau, et al., 2007).  It is also important to look at the biological maturation of the child, this is because the behavior of children will always change as they grow from their childhood to teenage hood. It is possible that as Kara entered into teenage hood she began to be very defensive in almost everything. She became emotional even over little things or options about them.  Mostly this has to do with their biological changes or maturation. These differences will always support the development of the emotional and social competencies that seem to underlie temperamental individuality among teenagers.  Also, the development of the child and how she is represented in the society will come into play when she is relating to people of communicating an issue to her fellow teenagers (Liu, et al., 2013).  According to Liu, et al., (2013), the social and psychological development of a teenager is usually well understood as being a continuous interaction between the biological maturation, social and other representation aspects with regard to psychological development.

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Another reason for the teenager’s behavior may have to do with her relationship with her peers or her close family members. In the manner, the interaction will have been observed in the earliest relationship development between the child and her parents or her teenage friends. Usually, all children that are exposed to a normal circumstance will tend to develop a strong emotional attachment to people who care for them. According to various psychologists, the development that comes with this attachment is usually natural biologically like the way they first learned to walk. Usually this is not a byproduct of the way that their parents were able to provide them with warmth or food (Liu, et al., 2013).  On the other hand, this looks at the way these attachments enabled the child to change as an individual since the attachment was able to motivate the child to stay close to people who care for her. In the end, they would benefit both positively or negatively in security, learning, warmth, guidance, and affirmation from the type of relationship that was provided (Liu, et al., 2013). 

In this manner, the type of behavior that the teenager will reveal especially in a situation of intense pressure will also reveal the nature of attachment that the child puts in different things.  One of the best practices is to use the ‘strange situation’ technique in revealing behavior and treating. The technique entails a brief separation of the teenager from the normal situation and introducing them to a whole different environment. During this time, the caregiver will allow the teenager to be alone in a room, then return and greet her while noting down her response (Dever, 2016). This will all depend on the way the child was treated in the new environment, in this manner, there is a possibility that she will be very emotional to depict anger and resentment or she will be very quiet to depict fear or despair, or in other situations, the teenager may react with an agitated response. By looking at the above diagnosis of Kara, it can be concluded that what she is going through is a social issue. This is because the child might be feeling insecure in the new teenage environment. It is possible that Kara might have had a close attachment to her parents as a child and now she is left to experience a new social world of teenage hood (S.S.Gau, et al., 2007).

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Conclusion

In conclusion, the above situation depicts both a social, growth and developmental issue. This is because as the child matured to teenage hood, the relationship with the people around her, especially her parents naturally changed. This automatically led to parent-child conflict and social insecurity,  it is important that parents communicate with Kara and give her a warming response by reasoning with her instead of reasoning for her. If this is done well, she will be able to go through her teenage hood well.

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