Promoting Emotional Well Being of Children and Adolescents and Preventing Their Mental Ill Health: A Handbook

`I found this book very useful. The authors state in their preface that they aim to provide practitioners with information and examples of services...for children, young people and their families . They have achieved their aim, while also creating a resource for those who simply wish to learn more about child and adolescent mental health.

The 15 chapters in this book provide detailed and well presented information about mental health problems affecting children... I found the chapter on attachment and attachment disorders particularly useful. It gives an outline of attachment theory and its main concepts, before providing sections on attachment disorders in preschool, school-age, and adolescent children...One of the things I like best about this book is its avowed rejection of an over-medicalized view of child mental health problems. Thus there is a chapter on socially excluded children, and the mental health risks they face...This book will enable some of us to envisage and lobby for such services where gaps in provision remain.'

`This book provides content that is well referenced, clear, logically laid out, easy to read, and applicable to children and care providers across social systems and cultural groups. Topics covered include: the prevention and management of anxiety and depression, addiction, and eating disorders; the development of culturally sensitive services for ethnic minority children and families, the impact of parenting programmes and the life skills education programmes in schools; and ways of meeting the mental health needs of children who are socially excluded, homeless or under the auspice of a local authority care system. The authors provide evidence not only to support their theoretical claims but also to dispel unexamined myths about children and adolescents. What is stunning is the authors' targeting of developmental age-sensitive and developmental age-specific strategies to foster the development of age appropriate behaviour of children, adolescents and their parents. Also stunning is the authors' poignant call for better top-down, `systemic positioning' of programmes for children as a primary way of assuring their continuity and success. The authors are to be commended, as well, for their effort to increase the power of an intervention initiative with children and their parents by integrating multicultural concepts into the initiative.

In summary, this guide for promoting a child's emotional competence can be of great value for anyone who cares about children and those who are responsible for improving the lot of children in society including parents, practitioners, politicians, faculty and students. I highly recommend the guide for upper division, undergraduate nursing and social work students mastering concepts in the discipline of paediatrics, education, and mental health.'