Paediatric Psychiatry

Child and adolescent psychiatry (or pediatric psychiatry) is a branch of psychiatry that focuses on the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of mental disorders in children, adolescents, and their families. Child and adolescent psychiatry and psychotherapy comprises the diagnosis, treatment, prevention, and rehabilitation of neuropsychiatric and developmental disorders, as well as behavior disturbances during childhood and adolescence. The need for a separated psychiatric discipline for children and adolescents results from age-dependent characteristics of mental disorders, strongly influenced by rapidly alternating stages of the neurobiological and social development in this period of life.