Making Sense of the Label: What Emerging Adults Can Tell Us About Growing Up with a Mental Health Diagnosis.

[摘要] Despite increasing numbers of children diagnosed with mental health disorders, there is limited research on how children come to understand these diagnoses in childhood.Drawing on 42 in-depth, semi-structured interviews with emerging adults between the ages of 18 and 22 who were diagnosed with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), depression, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), and/or bipolar disorder before the age of 17, this study examines how emerging adults recount making sense of their diagnoses in childhood.Interviews elicited participants’ life history narratives, including how they learned about, experienced, and discussed their diagnoses in childhood, and their recommendations for how diagnoses should best be delivered and explained to children.Participants’ accounts suggest that parents play an instrumental role in delivering diagnoses to children, often acting as translators and withholders of information.Parental knowledge about children’s mental health affects children’s experiences, and withholding diagnoses can exacerbate stigma.Children actively seek and obtain additional information about their diagnoses as they make sense of them over time.Rather than simply absorbing information, children actively interpret, embrace, and challenge narratives from multiple sources throughout their childhoods.While diagnoses may empower children by providing an explanation for their symptoms, motivating them to make changes, and opening doors to treatment, children often experience and fear stigma associated with diagnoses and treatments as well.This study demonstrates the importance of sharing information openly with children in developmentally appropriate ways.It underscores the importance of educating and supporting parents in the crucial role they play in this process.To help minimize stigma, participants suggest that adults share information simply but directly with children and provide assurances that diagnoses are common, not their fault, not a reflection of their intelligence, and legitimate.This study raises the question of whether there are ways to achieve the goals of providing explanations, legitimizing problems, and shifting blame away from individuals without stigmatizing, labeling, and pathologizing children’s conditions.By inviting children into the discussion, both in research and in practice, we can give voice to - and learn from - children’s experiences.

[发布机构] University of Michigan

[效力级别] Child’S Perspective

[关键词] Children’S Mental Health;Child’S Perspective;Diagnosis;Qualitative Research;Social Work;Sociology;Social Sciences;Social Work and Sociology