Reflexions on the identity and the practice of child psychiatry

Τhe issue of the professional identity is salient for any medical discipline but especially for these, like child psychiatry and perhaps psychiatry, where the professional is the principal "instrument" in the assessment and in providing interventions. The Ericksonian view on identity implies self-sameness, continuity and synthesis which the child psychiatry as a specialty and child psychiatrists as professionals are to achieve more or less successfully. As a professional, the child psychiatrist is directed to the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric disorders and associated problems in children and adolescents viewing children as developing biopsychological entities being in ongoing co-influencing interaction with their immediate and wider societal contexts. As a discipline, child and adolescent psychiatry needs to integrate developmental biological and psychological aspects, and holistic child-centered and family-focused perspectives. Child psychiatry is to integrate not only various aspects of the child as individual and of his environments as they are, but also in their diachronic dimension. As child psychiatrists, in my view, we must keep integrated in our professional armamentarium the consideration for intra- and interpersonal processes. In that perspective, of special value is the appreciation of setting, of timing, and of interpersonal processes in their interaction with intrapersonal ones. In addition, being both child-centered and family-focused, we need a systemic literacy to look at the families and of children as part of them. Apart from evidence-based information and clinical skills, we need some mature attitude to helpfully use our knowledge and skills. This attitude can transcend the state of the art professional algorithms; rather it integrates and not just imitates them. It cautions against too much enthusiasm in following the pendulum. It implies awareness of some reasonable limit to the urge to change the children and families. In fact, many developmentally and behaviorally disabled children need not only attempts to correction, but also some help to live and develop more successfully with their handicaps. Here, if not everywhere, a facilitating discovery and building on patient's personal assets professional approach is needed. The international integration of "child psychiatries" of different countries and world's regions is valuable, and not only with reference to elaborating on and further developing child psychiatry as a theory and practice, but in the view of international co-support, which being almost everywhere under-served child psychiatry and its potential patients-children, adolescents and families-necessitate.