News from Psychotherapy Offices of Tony Madril

     On the one hand, having a readily available and accurate diagnosis can help to relieve the family's anxiety about what it is their child is facing. A clear diagnosis can be extremely helpful in aiding the therapist and parent in obtaining specialized services for the child, such as special education, speech or occupational therapy. It can also help certain children qualify for admission to various publicly funded mental health and child welfare programs unavailable to most.
      On the other hand, having a quick and accurate diagnosis will neither reduce the child's troublesome symptoms, nor create the environment necessary for the therapeutic interventions to begin taking hold. Only the careful and steady development of the therapeutic rapport and a thorough assessment of child's mental health symptoms can accomplish these most critical clinical tasks.
      A strong therapeutic alliance can provide a child with the sense of psychological safety necessary to for him or her to begin disclosing much-feared topics, such as past experiences of physical or sexual abuse. It becomes the primary protective element as it begins to buffer the child from the full force of painful emotions that inevitably arise throughout the process of facing one's problems. In fact, careful research in the field of mental health has indicated that it is the quality of the relationship between the therapist and client, not the particular interventions employed, which holds the greatest potential to create positive, progressive change in the life of the individual receiving therapy.
      Similarly, a careful examination of the child's psychiatric symptoms by the therapist can become a good measure of how quickly and to what extent the child's symptoms will improve. A proficient psychiatric evaluation can provide some very important answers to questions such as: What triggers the onset of the child's symptoms? How do these symptoms function for the child? Do they distress the child-or are they somehow advantageous to him or her? How do others respond to the child symptoms? Do they act to reinforce or extinguish these symptoms? What else in the child's environment influences the nature and function of the child's symptoms? Equipped with suitable answers to these questions, the therapist can then proceed to develop the most effective treatment plan for the child, which, when implemented, will begin to alleviate the child's symptoms in the quickest time possible.
      Although getting a timely and accurate diagnosis for your child is an important part of any prudent treatment process, it falls second to the initial tasks of allowing the therapist to conduct a sound evaluation of the child's mental health symptoms and allowing him the time to establish a genuine relationship with him or her. Clarification of the psychiatric diagnosis can always happen later, by way of further evaluation by the therapist or through a referral for formal psychological testing. It may help to remember that a psychiatric diagnosis is ultimately a guide to the treatment process as well as a tool to obtain resources on behalf of the child.