Mood disorders
Mood disorders can impact every facet of a child’s life, making the most basic activities difficult for clients and their families. This was the case for 13-year-old Kara, who was struggling at home and at school. For more than 8 years, Kara suffered from temper tantrums, impulsiveness, inappropriate behavior, difficulty in judgment, and sleep issues. As a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner working with pediatric clients, you must be able to assess whether these symptoms are caused by psychological, social, or underlying growth and development issues. You must then be able recommend appropriate therapies.
This week, as you examine antidepressant therapies, you explore the assessment and treatment of pediatric clients with mood disorders. You also consider ethical and legal implications of these therapies.
Note: This Assignment is the first of 10 assignments that are based on interactive client case studies. For these assignments, you will be required to make decisions about how to assess and treat clients. Each of your decisions will have a consequence. Some consequences will be insignificant, and others may be life altering. You are not expected to make the “right” decision every time; in fact, some scenarios may not have a “right” decision. You are, however, expected to learn from each decision you make and demonstrate the ability to weigh risks versus benefits to prescribe appropriate treatments for clients.
When pediatric clients present with mood disorders, the process of assessing, diagnosing, and treating them can be quite complex. Children not only present with different signs and symptoms than adult clients with the same disorders, but they also metabolize medications much differently. As a result, psychiatric mental health nurse practitioners must exercise caution when prescribing psychotropic medications to these clients. For this Assignment, as you examine the client case study in this week’s Learning Resources, consider how you might assess and treat pediatric clients presenting with mood disorders.
Note: This Assignment is the first of 10 assignments that are based on interactive client case studies. For these assignments, you will be required to make decisions about how to assess and treat clients. Each of your decisions will have a consequence. Some consequences will be insignificant, and others may be life altering. You are not expected to make the “right” decision every time; in fact, some scenarios may not have a “right” decision. You are, however, expected to learn from each decision you make and demonstrate the ability to weigh risks versus benefits to prescribe appropriate treatments for clients.
Examine Case Study: An African American Child Suffering From Depression. You will be asked to make three decisions concerning the medication to prescribe to this client. Be sure to consider factors that might impact the client’s pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic processes.
The assessing and Treating Pediatric Clients with Mood Disorders Introduction Depression is the most common mental disorder for young people, and it is associated with educational underachievement, self-harm, and suicidality. The depression rate among children this day is so disturbing. The effect of depression is devastating since it leads to a variety of physical and emotionally problems. 1 Depression can reduce the child ability to function at academically (American Psychiatric Association, 2018).
We can categorize depression in children into two types, the 1st is major depression in this type of depression the child will be in depression for less than a month and the child might experience it again sometime in life. Dysthymia depression is a less form of severe chronic depression that last for two years in total (American Psychological Association, 2016). This is the most serious and considered the leading cause of suicide death, and disability in adolescent in this age group (WHO, 2014) Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) is antidepressant and helps children and adolescent to get back into a stable mood from mood disorder. It is important to monitor children at a closely at the first four weeks of administering this medication, this help identify a change in behavior.Some sign to watch for include sleeplessness, withdrawal from social gathering or unnecessary agitation (Anxiety and Depression Association of America, 2016).