Question 1
Disruptive behavior problems include violence and aggression and are connected to various difficulties a child is facing in the school environment such as poor academic performance and problems in peer relationships. These disruptive behaviors normally affect the child, his or her family members as well as classmates at school. However, instilling the child with social skills and minimizing aggressiveness can effectively solve these problems. Social skills programs can provide the child with a range of skills required to cope with school environment, both socially and academically. One of the important skills learnt in program is the problem solving skills, which help in solving problems that a child encounters in school.
Although some of level of aggression, noncompliance and defiance is normal for young children as they develop, some children increase these disruptive behaviors as they develop and affect the social and academic performance of the child. Behavior disorders are usually characterized by having social behaviors that affect one and others negatively and such conditions are diagnosed in mental health centers for children. In these centers, the child is instilled with skills that can help control those behaviors so that other children are not affected with the behaviors. Aggressiveness and violence are some of the behaviors that are harmful to other children, so they should be controlled.
Additionally, children with persistent social problems have a high risk of carrying the problem to adolescence and adulthood. Children who are seriously disruptive and aggressive have negative impacts on others since they oppress peers, frustrate parents and destruct teachers as they teach. Apart from lack of social skills, another factor that contributes to child maladjustment is parent variable that have a significant influence on the behavior of a child. These variables include parent stress, poor parenting skills and parent psychopathology and affect the social functioning of the child to a great extent. For instance, parent stress can cause severe depression on the child, resulting to mental disturbance that eventually affect the behavior.
Children with social difficulties normally experience problem when in social situations and they use their disruptive behaviors to seek attention. In addition, they lack wide range of social problem solving skills. Luckily, social skills training reduce the disruptive behaviors and improve peer acceptance. The training goes for eight weeks and results to a change in behavior and improvement in the way the child socializes with peers. They also relate well with their parents and violence is also minimized. This implies that this training significantly helps children with disruptive behavior disorders leave the undesirable traits. Problem solving and social skill training decreases aggressiveness at home and school. Records also show that combination of child social skills and parenting skills result to impressive outcomes.
Disruptive behavior problems emerge in children due to various psychological and biological factors. These factors are impulsivity or hyperactivity, cognitive risks, genetic risks and difficult temperament. Hyperactivity makes children behave differently and may make people to scold them, making them become oppositional. They also have problems in paying attention. Learning makes them feel distressed; hence, develop disruptive behavior problems due to anger and frustration. The behaviors become noticeable after sometime, though they can be eliminated through treatment.
Child’s difficult temperament is another factor that influences the development of behavior problem in future. Child’s temperament go hand in hand with parental control, therefore difficultness of the child’s temperament may be influenced by poor parenting skills, leading to behavior dysfunction. Such children with conduct problems tend to have callous unemotional traits (CU) that increase chances of maladjustment. CU traits include lack of guilt, and concern of what others are feeling. The child also does not feel concerned about an important activity and is less emotional. Such traits are similar to those that define construct of adults’ psychopaths. Children with these traits show are severe and aggressive behavioral patterns.
Child’s susceptibility to development of conduct disorder is also associated with genetic dimensions. This is where the child inherits conduct problems from parents or other blood related relatives. This factor is not necessarily influenced by parenting skills since the inheritance of such genes cannot be controlled. This genetic disposition component leads to development of severe behavior problems result to criminal behavior. These genetic dimensions are carried from generation to generation and can only be reduced by taking the affected child to social skill training program where she or he can be instilled with the important social and problem solving skills.
Influence of family is the other contributing factor that leads to the emergence and maintenance of disruptive behavioral disorders in children. According to research, interpersonal dynamics in families has a significant influence in the development of behavior problems. Aversive parenting skills such as negative reinforcement and brutality, parent criminality, poor interactions between the child and parent, poor discipline, family demographics and socio-economic status of the family are some of the contributing factors that lead to behavioral disorders in children. These factors are avoidable, so parents should avoid them to prevent children from adopting bad and aggressive conducts.
The other risk factor that can lead to emergence and maintenance child’s disruptive behavior is associates with characteristics of school environment. They include features such as class size, organization, socio-demographic features and school culture. Some other factors in school that contribute to disruptive behavior problems is peer relationship problems such as peer rejection where the child is rejected by his or her peer group and this leads to behavioral problems. This rejection also makes the child associate with antisocial peers, especially when he or she becomes an adolescent, which leads to antisocial outcomes. In school, the child may also form alliance with bad peer groups; hence, adopting the deviant behaviors.
Poor parenting practices are also associated with development of disruptive behavior problems. There are five practices that are mostly involved and they include spanking, punitive discipline such as yelling, threatening and nagging. Physical aggression such as beating and hitting, inconsistency and positive involvement are the other practices that can lead to disruptive behavioral problems. These practices instill fear, stress and depression on the child, leading to mental problems that are eventually expressed through behaviors. The child also gets frustrated because of the yelling and beating and therefore takes his or her frustration and aggression to other children in school.
Anxiety and depression are other factors that can lead to problems in peer relationship and social functioning. Anxiety influences the development of disruptive behavior as it makes the child be seen as strange, shy and socially inactive. Depression also contributes to problems in peer relationships as makes the child socially neglected, irritable and socially neglected. It also makes children reflect and focus on negative side of life. Children with AD/HD have social problems because they bother other people unintentionally. They lack to pick up social cues when conversing with other people as they lose concentration unintentionally. Teacher yells at them and this makes other child fear to befriend with such people.
Protective factors are important to reduce the risk of children developing behavioral problems. The contributing factors are improved in child’s life to promote resilience. The protective factors are categorized in three groups. The first is to improve personal attributes of the child, for instance individual’s temperament, social competence and cognitive ability. The second category is to improve individual’s interaction with broader and immediate environment and encourage a secure attachment with parents, individuals who can offer psychological or emotional support and those that show social values. The last protective factor is improving the interacting systems in the world of the individual, for instance educational systems in school where the individual spends a lot of time and has regulatory duties.
Question 2
Bipolar disorder also called manic depression in a constant brain disorder characterized by sudden impairing changes in thinking, mood, energy and behavior. Behavioral symptoms are the most apparent, although the disorder results to serious, cardiac, cognitive and metabolic effects. Symptoms normally appear suddenly or gradually during childhood, adolescent or adulthood. According to researchers, bipolar disorder can be found in any age group, including preschoolers.
The disorder affects each child differently and the frequency, duration and intensity of symptoms and one’s response to treatment vary significantly. This is because as the child develops, the disorder may affect shape, size and function of different regions and networks of the brain. It is simply a neurodevelopmental illness. Brain matures in parts at different time and rate and it may take up to 25 years for the brain to mature completely. This implies that diagnosis and symptoms of this disorder changes as the child develops. Bipolar disorder is inheritable; therefore, can be transmitted from parent to the child.
Currently bipolar disorder has no cure and there only treatment is controlling the child to prevent dangerous behaviors. However, research is still going on so that doctors can help adults as well as children with this psychiatry disorder. Scientists expect genetic discoveries to lead them to finding accurate diagnoses, improved treatments and may be even cure. However, people should handle the problem at hand with the available means as they wait for better treatment. This will help relieve pain experienced by the suffering child as well as prevent occurrence of dangerous behaviors.
The number of preadolescent children having bipolar disorder is increasing every day. The study examines the nature of bipolar disorder among young children who are not yet attained adolescent age. The study will help understand the main causes of this disorder and how these young children should be helped. The main aim of the study is to examine whether most of genetic inheritance is the cause for presence of bipolar disorder in children of preadolescent age. The study involves the affected children together with their biological parents.
METHOD
Participants
A sample of 200 children with bipolar disorder will be recruited together with their biological parents. The children should be aged between 5 and 12 years from around America and their parents were aged between 18 and 35 years. The recruits will include both Americans and African Americans. It will also include single mothers or fathers as long as they are bloody related. Twins and triplet children will also be included. All children and their parent’s names will be taken from records of pediatric clinics and they will be informed about study and its importance.
Procedure
Parents and children that will be recruited to participate will to be given 5 dollars when they attend the screening interview. Blood samples of both parents or one parent and the child will be taken for screening. Those that will participate in the longitudinal study of bipolar disorder will be awarded an extra 10 dollars. They will also be given money to cater for their transportation costs. Parents will be given questionnaires on the child’s behavior and that will be returned after two weeks. Those that will agree to participate in the study will be scheduled to attend at the pediatric clinic two weeks after the screening. The 200 patients recruited from the pediatric clinic records are supposed to complete the whole assessment. They will attend all laboratory assessments that will take one month and also return questionnaires that ask the information about the behavior of the child.
Videotapes will be taken to record the reviews of the laboratory assessment that will takes two hours. The whole procedure will also involve activities such as play time with toys, cleaning tasks, play without toys, teaching tasks and a 15 minutes break in between the activities. The questionnaires should be completed by mothers as they respond to their children needs. After all the activities, parents and their children will be released. The collected data will then be taken for analysis.
Data Analysis
Blood samples from parents and the children will be analyzed to observe whether genes that cause bipolar disorder in preadolescent children are present in the parents’ genes. Analysis to examine variance will also be used to test difference the two blood samples. This will be a two tailed analysis since there will be multiple comparisons between the two grouped samples of blood. Analysis will be done and then recorded down for references purposes. The completed questionnaires will then be looked into to examine whether bipolar disorder has been in family lineages. The questions will be about the child and parents medical history in order to examine the origin of the disorder.
Results
After analyzing the data, it showed that most of the preadolescent children with bipolar disorder had inherited from their parents. In cases where one parent had the disorder, the child had the disorder too. Cases where both parents had the disorder, the child had the disorder too. Such cases, the disorder was caused by the environment where the child lives and studies or even the parenting skills the parents use. Such factors can be easily treated compared to situations where the disorder is due to genetic inheritance.
In situations where one parent has bipolar disease, the chances of the child to have the disorder are 15 to 30%. This is through the inheritance of genes that carry this disorder. When both parents are carriers of genes causing bipolar disorder the chances for the child to have the disease are high than when one parent is a carrier. The chances are 50 to 75% and this implies that a child of such couple have less chances to be born normal. In cases of inheritance, the child needs advanced treatment so that the condition is controlled. Treatment will not only prevent dangerous behaviors from happening but will also provide the child will all needs required for normal growth just like other normal children.
The other origin of bipolar disorder is from one sibling to the other. For instance, if two or three siblings are fraternal twins then the chance of the disease to be inherited from one child to the other is 25%. When the twins are identical the chances are 85% and this means the probability of inheritance is very high. This case is similar to that of parents to child inheritance and therefore requires treatment so that the child stays in a normal condition.
Findings
A developmental psychopathology perspective considers cultural contexts, family, biological, social and an individual when determining the origins of a disorder. It considers the many developmental causes leading to a disorder. The perspective also makes people understand than most psychology disorders result from many causes. Developmental psychopathology perspective helps us understand why bipolar disorder has multiple causes. The research study shows that bipolar disorder originates from genetic inheritance from parent to the child. It can also be influenced by poor parenting methods as well as depression caused to the environment where the child lives. In this case, the perceptive explains bipolar disorders originate from many causes. This therefore implies that bipolar disorder is a developmental psychopathology that can be treated by trained psychiatrists to improve child’s life.
Conclusion
Bipolar disorder is disabling children everyday due to the many cases of inheritance that are taking place between parents and children. Childhood is a once time opportunity; therefore, parents should provide better treatment to their child for normal development as well as save their lives. It is also important for the child to be equipped with both social and problem solving skills that are useful in making wise decisions and solving different problems in life.
