Enhancing Pediatric Mental Health Care: Strategies for Preparing a Community

Pediatricians and other primary care clinicians* caring for children traditionally have focused their attention on meeting the health care needs of individual children they see in their offices and clinics. However, effective care of the growing number of children and familieswho are experiencing chronic medical and mental disorders will also require a “population” healthperspective.Manypolicy statements fromtheAmericanAcademyof Pediatrics (AAP)havepointed to the importanceof thepopulationperspective in providing and improving pediatric health services.1–10 From this perspective, all members of a community are affected by the health of its individual members. For children, mental health resides not solely within the child but within the web of interactions that connect the child, the family and school, health and other child service systems, and the neighborhood and community in which the child lives.11 This is not to deny that biology is a determinant of mental health and mental illness; rather, biological factors interact with the psychosocial environment to result in mental health, mental illness, and recovery from mental illness.