Informed Parents, Healthy Kids

Parents and mental health practitioners must work together to appropriately assess, diagnose, treat, and prevent mental disorders, emotional disabilities, or problematic behaviors in children and adolescents. If one expects to establish or to enhance parent-mental health practitioner collaborations in the provision of mental health services targeting children and adolescents with mental disorders, it is important to empower parents with the same evidence-based scientific knowledge mental health practitioners are expected to have. Informed Parents, Healthy Kids helps parents to determine if the mental health practitioner who provides mental health services to their child is guided by evidence-based approaches during the delivery of such services, rather than on the imagination, speculation, or personal beliefs of the mental health practitioner. Encompassed in sixteen chapters, the overall aim is to either establish or enhance parents' mental health literacy (i.e., knowledge about all aspects of mental disorders), and for parents to be able to question the clinical practice of mental health practitioners when they determine that such practice is not based on evidence-based approaches recommended in the mental health literature. As noted by Dr. Janine Jones on the back cover of this book, 'The old days of the mental health provider as 'expert' and setting treatment goals outside the knowledge of the family are over.' Parents are provided with numerous clinical examples to help them express their concerns to mental health practitioners with an emphasis on evidence-based clinical practices among children and adolescents experiencing one or more of the mental disorders, emotional disabilities, or problematic behaviors discussed in 'Informed Parents, Healthy Kids: Information You Need to Know to Find the Right Mental Health Provider.'