Contemporary Approaches to Child and Adolescent Mental Health will comprise two volumes, Volume One, Infancy and Childhood, and Volume Two, Adolescence. The volumes will aim to provide a clinical approach to assessment and intervention with infants, children, adolescents, and their families who experience emotional, behavioural, and/or developmental difficulties, including psychiatric disorders. The volumes will balance the dominant biological models and approaches that focus on individual diagnoses in the infant, child, or adolescent at the expense of a broader developmental, relational, and psychosocial focus. In the process the range of roles, skills, and responsibilities enacted by the competent child and adolescent mental health practitioner will be explored.

The volumes will be organised with a developmental focus. Volume 1 spans the antenatal period to the onset of adolescence; that is, the 0-12-year-old and their family. Volume 2 will concern adolescents. The authors contributing to these edited volumes will integrate evidence from the current literature and their own clinical experiences, and will used de-identified case material to illustrate and explore contemporary themes impacting on the mental health of infants, children, and adolescents, and approaches to their care. Complex case material will be used to describe the interplay of the developmental, environmental, sociocultural, psychological, biological, and at times political factors that contribute to mental health presentations of children from infancy to young adulthood and their families. The case studies will be written to highlight the way in which experienced clinicians weigh up the contribution of these various factors to the child’s presentation, and how this impacts on decision making about diagnosis, treatment planning, and intervention. Principles of assessment and intervention will be outlined. There will be an emphasis on formulation as well as the complex issues of diagnosis and differential diagnosis in developing children. Communication and collaboration with multidisciplinary colleagues is a hallmark of competent child and adolescent mental health practice, and the centrality of this to clinical work will be illustrated.

Chapters will cover a wide range of common and not so common presentations, and case material will be used to examine controversial issues in the field, and the ethical dilemmas that confront practitioners. These include the relative weight given to biological and genetic risk factors in the aetiology of disorder; the marked increase in the diagnosis of ADHD and more recently bipolar disorder in children and teenagers; cultural and political factors impacting on assessment and intervention (in Indigenous families, or in children and families seeking asylum); the complex impact of child abuse and neglect on symptomatic presentations; the inadequacy of current diagnostic classification systems, particularly for younger children; the role of medication in treatment of young children; and the impact of systemic and resource factors on clinicians and families.

Volume 1 will draw on developments in the fields of developmental psychology, neurobiology, economic, and social sciences that have led to a new understanding of the importance of the early years. Along with this understanding has come an expectation that mental health practitioners in public and private practice will have the knowledge and skills to work with children and families across this very broad developmental period from birth to the onset of adolescence.

In this first volume the chapters will address a wide range of clinical issues. At the same time each will outline a thorough and thoughtful approach to assessment and intervention that is informed by current literature, many years of clinical experience, and common sense.

Contemporary Approaches to Child and Adolescent Mental Health, Volume One, Infancy and Childhood will be published first.