Children’s Mental Health: Three Things to Consider

Mental health has become a term used for many different purposes in our culture. We often hear the term “mental health issues” on the news as the reason behind people committing crimes. Social-emotional learning has become a part of most academic curriculums in the school system and through which students are taught about mental health.

Many workplaces now offer paid time off for mental health days. Tune into any radio program or turn on any given podcast and the term is likely to be used several times throughout. The term “mental health” is now deeply embedded in our culture. While most people believe that mental health is important, they struggle to define it.

It becomes even more confusing when it comes to children’s mental health in particular. This is probably due in part to the fact that an adult can often identify whether they feel mentally healthy and often a child needs someone else to identify this for them.

When we talk about children’s physical health, we understand that if their health is in a good state then their body functions in a way that allows them to grow, develop, and flourish. So, we can have relative confidence in the physical health of a child if they exhibit signs of health: bodily development and growth and general flourishing in society.

It gets a bit more confusing when we try to compare physical health with mental health. If mental health simply referred to brain health then we would only be talking about neuroscience. Neuroscience certainly plays a role in informing our continued understanding of mental health, but mental health is much more than just the health of one’s brain or neurology.

There are three basic categories that mental health counselors look at when attempting to determine the level of mental health in an individual: the ability to regulate emotions, the ability to engage in healthy relationships, and the ability to experience goodness in life. These categories are based on my own observations while working in community mental health for several years.

These categories of mental health can become difficult to identify when we are addressing them in children. I will go through each of these and address ways to tell if a child is experiencing difficulty in any of these categories.

Regulation of Emotions

Emotions are such a beautiful part of the human person. Could you imagine life without the ability to experience joy or sadness? Our emotions communicate what is happening to us and have the ability to connect us with others. Emotions can be difficult if they feel unmanageable.

We tend to experience emotions as unmanageable when we cannot regulate our emotional reactions. There are many instances when we experience regulations throughout life and, if done right, the purpose behind them is to create order to achieve a goal.

Think of the traffic regulations that we all attempt to follow. The intent is to allow people to be able to travel in their vehicles with some degree of safety. We agree to travel under the guidance of these traffic regulations, trusting that it will allow us to be safe and to travel where we want. Similarly, emotions need some guidance as well.

Initially, infants are completely dependent upon their parents for this regulation. Gradually, the need for the physical presence of parents to regulate a child’s emotions becomes less frequent, although still needed. The hope and goal is for parents to gradually teach their children how to regulate their own emotions.

A sign of difficulty in this area would be a child who is overwhelmed by emotions for extended periods with has difficulty being comforted or calmed down. Once children become older the inability to regulate or find healthy comfort or calm can often manifest as seeking that comfort in ways that are not healthy.

This often looks like seeking it in substances, overuse of social media, being overly concerned with academic or athletic achievements, or seeking this through sexual gratification. The unhealthy ways that a child seeks comfort and emotional regulation are often what raise concern. It can be helpful to look underneath these unhealthy choices to what the child might be seeking.

Ability to Engage in Healthy Relationships

The second category that is important to consider is the area of engagement in healthy relationships. It is a sign of health in a person to simply have a desire to engage in relationship with others. Initially, this begins with primary caregivers and eventually with age extends to peers and even other trustworthy adults.

The next aspect of this to look at is how a young person engages in relationships with others. It can be helpful to narrow this down a bit and look at this through the lens of attachment. Attachment is the relationship that a person develops with safety. In a securely attached young person, one notices that the child can take some risks and trust that the person who keeps them safe will continue to be there if they need comfort.

This might look like a young child being willing to play with a new toy or engage with a new person, but after some time walking or crawling back to their primary caregiver to receive that assurance or comfort from them.

In a teenager this might look like the teen taking the risk of vulnerability to engage in friendship with another and when there is conflict, having the ability to share their hurt and disappointment with their caregiver, ultimately trusting that they have someone to trust when things become difficult.

Engaging in an unhealthy relationship or relating to others in an unhealthy way is typically easy for adults to notice. This might look like a child being overcome with extreme fear or nervousness around others that keeps them from taking the risk of engaging in a relationship.

It might look like a child becoming completely consumed with a particular person and taking on many of their traits and interests. Or, in the later years, it might look like a teen basing their self-worth on how others see them and being inconsolable when experiencing rejection.

Receiving Goodness and Flourishing

It might seem difficult to draw a connection between children’s mental health and receiving goodness and flourishing. The connection has to do with being able to experience and receive emotions that generally feel good and the natural desire to seek more goodness. The foundation for this begins with a child being able to acknowledge the goodness that they bring to the world.

It also requires the ability to receive and express other emotions like curiosity, wonder, enjoyment, and excitement, which come through experiencing other types of goodness that can be found in the world around them. When a child is not able to experience and receive these emotions that come from experiencing goodness, we can conclude that something is not quite right.

This tends to happen when a child is suffering from a physical ailment, and I would contend that this is also true when a child is suffering in their mental health. When a child is not able to receive goodness and flourish, it often looks like a lack of motivation, apathy, not finding enjoyment in things that one typically would, not seeking out new experiences, withdrawing, and seeming to only be able to experience the more difficult emotions of fear, sadness or anger.

In conclusion, there are three broad ways to determine the state of children’s mental health: the capacity to regulate emotions, the capacity to engage in healthy relationships, and the capacity to receive goodness and flourish. When a child appears to lack this capacity for a prolonged period, we can conclude that there are challenges in their mental health.

Sometimes caregivers and loved ones can discover what this is and support the child until they can experience mental health again. Sometimes caregivers and loved ones need some support in either figuring out the root of these challenges or in addressing the root of these challenges. This is when it can be helpful to reach out to a mental health counselor for support.

Next Steps

There are many different ways a mental health counselor can offer support to children and their families who find themselves in this situation. Perhaps one of the most helpful ways that a counselor can offer support to a child who is suffering from challenges to their mental health is to begin the conversation around identifying the need that the child has and working with the family to address how the family can work toward meeting this need.

It can be difficult, if not impossible, for caregivers to have the emotional capacity to step back and identify this need on their own. With guidance and support from a counselor, caregivers can identify the needs of their children and work toward meeting these needs.