A developmental perspective on behavioral health is important because biological and behavioral processes unique to each developmental period have far-reaching implications for health promotion, disease prevention and disease recovery in childhood and adolescence. Promotion of health during childhood and adolescence is important because it is during a healthy these early critical periods that major organ systems develop and learning of health-related behaviors, attitudes, values and perceptions take place.
The development of healthy lifecycle during childhood and adolescence will cast the mold for a similar lifestyle through the life span. Prevention of disease and rapid recovery from illness at all phases of the life span is by-products of a healthy lifestyle in early years (Chase-Lansdale 234). For instance, the challenges observed in developmental psychology are closely linked with age-specific developmental tasks. Children and youth of a certain age have to cope with certain developmental tasks related such as social relationship within the family and the peer groups, academic achievement at school, or identity formation. While peer relations are important developmental tasks already for kindergarten children, identity formation is a central issue during adolescence.
Behavioral health in childhood and adolescence may not have gained in prominence because historically these periods have been considered healthy stages of the life span. In childhood, chronic and debilitative diseases are not prominent. With the advent of antibiotic therapy to treat infectious disease, morbidity now is confined primarily to accidents and other genetic diseases. Morbidity in childhood currently tends to be the result of preventable nutritional deficits and infectious process. These conditions, however, may adversely affect the emotional and cognitive development of children resulting in less than optimal adult health and functioning. In adolescence, mobility and morality often are the result of preventable social, environment and behavioral factors. Preventable morbidity and mortality include accidents, homicide, injury or suicide.
A developmental perspective also requires the recognition and understanding of both children and adolescents status and change in different fields of development. Above all, it is important for children and youths striving towards experiencing their personal involvement and continuous support of the caregiver solidly. Such support includes acknowledgment freedom to struggle on one’s own. Developmental progression emerges from the interplay between the individual’s development readiness and actual functioning among ongoing environmental challenges. Its necessities are ascertaining specifically how each is functioning in his or her ongoing life situation and what each one needs to experience builds upon a sense of efficacy of that which has been learned, usually occurring using minute accomplishments and only occasionally by the breakthrough. When individuals experience their part in mastery, they have learned.
However, it is important to acknowledge that developmental perspective does not permit percolation with unusual unhealthy or defective behavior or growth in situational ineffective untimely and other difficult responses (Smith and Bonnie 235). The difference is more than a denotative exercise. For example, when faced with old terms such as ‘learning-disabled children’, it becomes easy to categorize such child dimensions in a narrow perspective, as if the child were differently developing persons to be set apart in our thinking from other children.
In conclusion, a developmental perspective is appropriately advocated because the subject matter and research undertaking of contemporary lifespan developmental psychology deal with the very question that engages child and youth care in their daily schedules. Therefore, developmental perspective is not merely preferred for its commonality; it is particularly suitable because its rich resources immediately applicable knowledge based on empirically verifiable research. This kind of knowledge foundation is directly necessary for children and youth and their immediate caregivers
Works Cited
Chase-Lansdale, P. Lindsay, Lauren S. Wakschlag, and Jeanne Brooks-Gunn. "A psychological perspective on the development of caring in children and youth: The role of the family." Journal of Adolescence 18.5 (1995): 515-556.
Smith, Carolyn, and Bonnie E. Carlson. "Stress, coping, and resilience in children and youth." The Social service review (1997): 231-256.
