Modern parents need to know the causes, symptoms, types of neurosis in children, because such a health problem has recently been encountered more and more often. The term implies psychogenic pathologies when a person reacts to a trauma of a psychological nature. It can be provoked by a prolonged situation that affects the individual, a sudden occurrence or an acutely perceived event. In childhood, this situation is particularly difficult.
Where did the trouble come from?
A variety of situations can provoke neurosis in children 3 years of age and older. Quite often, the reason is in the emotional trauma that affected the psyche of the little man. The genetic factor or pathologies that the child suffered at some point in his life can play a role. A significant impact on the mental state of the baby is exerted by the relationship of parents in the family, as well as communication with other representatives of society.
Overloads, including emotional ones, can affect the stability of a mental state. Increased physical tension, lack of time for a night's rest play a role. Much depends on the parents and the parenting methods they use. Any errors can cause neurosis in children in a mild, and sometimes severe, and other disorders of the mental state of a man.
Problem: how is it manifested?
Of course, the baby himself cannot tell that he needs treatment for a neurosis. In children, only elders can notice this condition. The main task of parents is to pay attention to the child in time and seek qualified help, as well as eliminate the factors that caused such a violation. The key phenomenon that provokes a violation of the psyche is the confrontation of the individual and the world surrounding her. This leads to hysteria and constitutes a powerful foundation for psychological conflict. As a rule, a child is characterized by an overestimated level of claims, while the surrounding space is not able to satisfy such requests.
It is known that neuroses in children and adolescents are often accompanied by a tendency to efforts beyond measure, although these are much higher than the actual capabilities of a particular person. Of the common causes provoking this condition, parental influence is especially noteworthy. Seniors encourage children to new and new achievements, urge them to succeed, completely not considering how great the possibilities of a particular person are, how much the child. Debt and one's own desires come into conflict, which leads to mental disorders. Often in a difficult situation are children whose individual aspirations run counter to the moral standards taught by him. Of considerable importance are the personal attachments of a particular individual.
Children's form: pathology features
Specific neuroses in preschool children are due to the fact that this condition develops while the personality is still being formed, and the result of this process, as numerous case studies have shown, depends on the approach to the educational process practiced in the family. There are many cases when parents take care of the child too much, are not ready to accept his personality, condone the negative qualities of a person or relate to the child too harshly, authoritarianly. All of them lead to the incorrect formation of personality, create the basis for a variety of mental deviations. Such approaches to education can distort the temperament of the child, given him by nature features.
Improper interaction between the older and younger in the family can cause a disturbance in the direction of the reactions. At the same time, persistent negative character traits are created. Studies show that many children have a preneurotic personality radical, that is, the child does not feel good enough, inferior. Over time, this leads to anxiety. Sooner or later, a person encounters something that plays the role of a trigger factor. This event is perceived inadequately, which becomes the start of the development of pathology - and psychotherapy is already needed. Neuroses in children and adolescents are a really very common problem in our society recently.
A start
If external conditions, family specifics and other factors created the basis for mental disorders, the most insignificant event can play the role of a triggering factor. It is likely that the symptoms of neurosis in children will suddenly appear after an inadvertent, harsh phrase, a comment formulated to offend the child. Sudden changes in living conditions can play a role. All these factors are united by a single result - a neurosis develops.
As shown by numerous studies, the manifestations of neurosis in a young child are often associated with biological characteristics. The older the individual, the less significant this factor. Of the most striking, typical causes, it is necessary to mention nervousness, neuropathy. As can be seen from medical statistics, recently the number of such cases has been steadily increasing.
Psyche, medicine and the beginning of beginnings
Several types of neurosis in children are known to medicine. In the general case, the violations are in the wrong emotional background on which the personality traits of the individual are based. Neuropathy is often provoked by the diseases transferred by the mother during the period of gestation. If a woman in an “interesting position” was a lot of nervous, and the birth process itself went with complications, the probability of a child’s neurosis is significantly higher than under favorable circumstances.
There are also known cases when diseases transferred during pregnancy and complications provoked encephalopathy, on the basis of which the child will develop ADHD in the future. This feature of development leads to difficult adaptation in social institutions. Often, a neurosis of obsessive states in children with ADHD becomes the cause of frequent breakdowns, forcing them to urgently hospitalize a child. Changes in stereotypes associated with everyday life are especially dangerous.
It is important
ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder) is a mental pathology regarding which official medicine has not yet developed a unified position. While some experts confidently diagnose the disease and prescribe drugs to eliminate it, others deny the very existence of such a problem, explaining all the manifestations with individual personality characteristics, that is, they deny the pathological nature. Such disputes have been ongoing for more than a decade throughout the world, the most prominent figures of the psychiatric community have entered into controversy, but so far they have not succeeded in formulating a final decision.
There is every chance that one doctor will diagnose ADHD in a child and suggest an increased risk of developing neural pathologies, and for the prevention of neurosis in children he will prescribe a potent drug, while another specialist will formulate a conclusion as a complete absence of mental health disorders. To some extent, both will be right, but at the same time both are wrong.
Age and psychological problems
Methods for eliminating children's neurosis, parent neurosis differ quite strongly. At the same time, it is worth remembering the effect on the clinical manifestations of the disease of the causes that provoked developmental abnormalities. Studies show that among preschool children and even younger, classic variants of the course of the disease are rarely recorded. This is due to insufficient personality maturity. The child is not yet conscious enough to become a cause of conflict. For young patients, neurotic reactions are more characteristic. The structure of this phenomenon is quite simple. Nervous disease can be systemic, sometimes a monosymptomatic form is diagnosed.
Most often, a neurosis in a child of three years of age and earlier manifests itself as enuresis, stuttering. The conditioned reflex connections are possible - intense activity with affective tension and the very state of affect. In practice, one of the most common cases is defensive movements, which eventually provoke a neurotic tic. Systemic neurosis, at first manifested as a neurotic response of the body, can easily become persistent in the future. During the period of study at school, during the adolescent stage of personality growth, the probability of the formation of a neurotic state similar to personality development is high. Such an outcome can be prevented only by the parents' careful attitude to the child and seeking qualified help, if necessary.
Symptoms: how to suspect a problem
The primary manifestations of a mental disorder are largely dependent on what kind of trauma triggered the disorder. The specific personal characteristics of a particular person also play a role. Characteristic features make it possible to determine a child’s neurosis and rank it as one of the well-known groups. Particular attention is paid to hysteria, suspiciousness, and sensitivity. A thorough analysis of the condition makes it possible to understand whether hysteria is present, whether an obsessive neurosis has developed, or if adequate therapy for neurasthenia is necessary.
And if more?
Hysteria is quite common, for which doctors very well know all the main characteristic symptoms. Treatment of neurosis in children, if this type is detected, is not an easy task. A person with such a violation is inclined to inspire ideas about the world around him, at the same time it is suggestible, amenable to external factors. Children with hysteria are impressionable, selfish, sensitive. They are characterized by sharp mood swings, egocentrism. The child requires others to be recognized. Such a neurosis is provoked by excessive claims, while personality traits do not correspond to them. Often this form develops in a baby who is at home from birth - a center of attention and a universal favorite.
Hysterical neurosis in a child is manifested by numerous, varied symptoms. To a greater extent, this is characteristic if a person develops according to a hysterical pattern; manifestations are more often monosymptomatic.
How to notice?
Hysteria can cause respiratory neurosis in children. To a greater extent this is characteristic of juvenile patients. Such attacks are not uncommon, if the child is alone in the family, his parents indulge him unjustifiably. If the baby is unsatisfied with something, he begins to cry, and when this does not give an effect, a seizure begins with respiratory arrest. A similar attack can provoke anger, also caused by a lack of attention to the desires of the child.
With age, neurosis in children manifests itself in a wide variety of situations. There may be seizures similar to epilepsy, asthma-like suffocation. Theatrical seizure, the child takes expressive poses. The duration of such a period in the presence of an observer is unpredictably long. Mostly the complaints formulated by the child do not correspond to his actual state, revealed during a professional medical examination.
Neurasthenia: what is the essence?
In this form, a child’s neurosis is manifested by irritability, weakness. The kid is inclined to cry, at the slightest excitement, a state of affect, a violent expression of emotions is possible, after which a period of repentance begins. Sometimes the child is lethargic, passive, but such periods are replaced by anxiety, physical activity. Changes in mood are quite frequent, a high probability of depression. Many children suffer from a lack of attention, quickly get tired. Efficiency with neurasthenia is reduced, and in the morning the head hurts. Headache is also characteristic of overstrain - mental, mental, fatigue in general. Headaches are often constant, as if they were squeezing the head.
Children of school age, adolescence and older with neurasthenia are prone to hypochondria, consider the disease incurable and very serious. Often, the course is complicated by sleep problems: it is difficult to sleep, the rest itself is shallow, nightmares are frequent, the patient constantly wakes up. Neurasthenia in a fairly large percentage of cases is accompanied by nightly fears. Most often they are associated with an experienced day. Vegetative disturbances are possible - trembling, pallor, redness of the skin, violation of the rhythm of the heartbeat.
Obsessive neurosis in children
Such a mental disorder is often caused by individual personality traits. More often it is observed in self-doubt and indecisive children, fearful, prone to suspiciousness. Many cases of family history are known: parents in childhood were also suspicious and anxious. From a very young age, kids are afraid of the new. Fears are sometimes associated with animals, insects, darkness. Many children are panicky afraid of loneliness. With age, anxiety, suspiciousness do not weaken, many develop a fear of contracting the disease. Often, such children set bans for themselves, thereby trying to protect themselves from "something bad." The clinical picture allows you to diagnose obsessive neurosis.
The treatment of obsessive neurosis in children should be entrusted to a qualified doctor. This condition is not easily tolerated for patients and relatives. Many patients suffer from a variety of phobias - insects, death, disease. Psychological protection from fears is realized through intrusive actions, some of which are ritual in nature. For example, a child can constantly wash his hands or slam. Over the years, the individual is more susceptible to doubts, thoughts. At the same time, many criticize the manifestations of such thinking from the side, try to deal with obsessive actions seen in oneself, which leads to the formation of new protection rituals.
Neurotic tics
Often, this is how an obsessive state manifests itself when a neurosis is still being formed. At the same time, the child feels estranged, trying to hold back the tics, which becomes the basis for the formation of an even more complex ritual. The hysterical person is distinguished by demonstrative tics, which are activated under the influence of external circumstances. The closeness of the people to whom the symptomatology is directed has a particularly strong effect. If the child suffers from neurasthenia, the tic can be activated with a somatic pathology that enhances other symptoms of the disease. If the situation traumatic for the child’s psyche is chronic, the neurotic state transforms over time, it is the tics that become its main symptoms.
Speech problems
With neurosis, many children develop stuttering. The term implies malfunctions of the rhythm of speech, violation of smoothness. The reason for this is convulsive muscle contractions. With neurosis, stuttering is first recorded at the age of two to four years. More often it provokes a strong fear, a different sharp impression. The frequency of the symptom depends on the intensity of the processes of development of thinking. Much is determined by how quickly the ability to use complex phrases in speech is assimilated.
For juvenile patients, convulsions of a clonic, tonic character are distinguished. As they grow older tonic dominate. The influence of the hereditary factor is known. If the family has already had cases of stuttering, the likelihood of developing such a phenomenon in a child is significantly higher. Activation of the disorder occurs in a stressful situation. Often, attempts to pronounce words are accompanied by additional movements, as if facilitating the task of pronunciation. Sometimes these are tics of the facial muscle fibers, some snap their fingers or stamp their feet.
Situations are different
Stuttering, provoked by a neurosis, is more characteristic of those who develop speech faster than the norm or at a standard pace. If the speech climate in the constant environment of the child is adequate, there are no genetic factors for the formation of a deviation, therapeutic measures are required. A timely and responsible approach allows you to soon completely eradicate the problem - it takes no more than a couple of weeks under the supervision of a qualified doctor.
Sometimes stuttering develops against the background of affect, shock, severe fright, after which the baby for some time completely becomes speechless. Even with adequate therapy, there is a risk of relapse in the future. If the case is especially severe, stuttering is fixed, a speech stereotype is formed. In this situation, a logoneurosis is diagnosed. , . – , . , . .
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Long studies of the phenomenon made it possible to formulate sound conclusions regarding the close relationship between enuresis and sleep mechanisms. The clinical picture varies significantly, much is determined by the external influence on the patient’s emotions. If the influence of traumatic factors is excluded for a certain period of time, incontinence is less common, sometimes it completely disappears. There is a noticeable relationship between the likelihood of developing enuresis and shyness of the child, increased sensitivity, a tendency to worry. Against the background of enuresis in children, a complex of their own inferiority is formed. Over time, this leads to a significant complication of the situation, the child develops closed.