Help with mental illness: Children and adolescents
Content of this page
Recognizing mental illness in children and adolescents
Mental stress and illnesses in children and adolescents have many causes. Examples include Stress, accidents, family burdens, strokes of fate ("traumatization") or changes in the body's metabolism.
Children and young people ask themselves:
- Why is everyone always in such a good mood - except me?
- Why can't I make any friends and why do others put me down?
- Why do I want to hurt myself and scratch myself? Am I right the way I am?
Parents ask themselves:
- What should I look out for if my child shows conspicuous behavior?
- How can I distinguish a mental illness from adolescent behavior?
- How can I support my child?
For children and adolescents with mental health problems or illnesses, the way they perceive themselves, their loved ones and the world around them changes, how they feel and how they behave. These changes can severely restrict their time with their family and their everyday life (school, friends, hobbies).
Information on advice and treatment
Most mental illnesses in children and adolescents can be treated primarily through psychotherapeutic measures. The earlier suitable support services for the children and young people themselves and their families are put in place, the better the chances of a positive outcome.
Counseling services help children and young people, but also their parents, not to be alone with questions and worries that arise. Family counseling centers in particular offer appropriate services for children and adolescents as well as their parents. Pediatricians, child and adolescent psychotherapists or child and adolescent psychiatrists are also good contacts. They offer both counseling and treatment services.
Victims of violence can find specialized and immediately available services for children and young people and their relatives in the OEG trauma outpatient clinics.
You can find more information about the trauma outpatient clinics here
Central points of contact , especially for thetreatment of mental illnesses, can be found in the (LVR) clinic responsible for your place of residence: the departments for child and adolescent psychiatry, psychosomatics and psychotherapy offer outpatient and (partially) inpatient psychotherapeutic and medical services.
Use of language and integration mediators (SIM)
In many cases, the LVR finances language and integration mediators for people with a refugee or migrant background if their German language skills are not yet sufficient.
Contact the LVR Competence Center Migration.