Table Of ContentCounselling Children with
Psychological Problems
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Counselling Children with
Psychological Problems
Malavika Kapur
Delhi • Chennai • Chandigarh
The copyright for the Appendix entitled, Developmental Psychopathology Check List
(DPCL) vests in the author.
Copyright © 2011 Dorling Kindersley (India) Pvt. Ltd.
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About the Author
Malavika Kapur is Visiting Professor, School of Humanities, National Institute of Advanced Studies
(NIAS), Bangalore. She retired as the Head of the Department of Clinical Psychology at the National
Institute of Mental Health and Neurosciences (NIMHANS) and has been an honorary professor for
NIAS from 2003 to 2010. Besides being a fellow of the British Psychological Society and the Indian
Association of Clinical Psychologists, Professor Kapur is also an honorary fellow and recipient of
the Lifetime Achievement Award of the Indian Association of Child and Adolescent Mental Health
and the National Academy of Psychology. She is also a consultant for organizations like WHO,
UGC, ICSSR and has been twice awarded Scholar in Residency at the Rockefeller Foundation Study
and Conference Center at Bellagio in Italy. Her research interests include developmental psychology,
community mental health programmes for children and adolescents in urban and rural schools,
primary health care and Anganawadi workers under the Integrated Child Development Services
of the Government of India, and development of assessment tools and intervention packages for
children and adolescents in the Indian context. Her main contribution is her work in developing
integrated models of mental health service delivery for children and adolescents. Her work is deeply
embedded in the Indian cultural context, as revealed in her study of child care in ancient India
based on Ayurveda. She has authored four volumes dealing with the subject of Indian children,
has edited and contributed to a number of books in collaboration with other scholars, and has over
100 academic publications. Professor Kapur has also published two books of children’s fiction,
Adventures at Kudremukh (Bangalore: Hitha Publications, 2003), and Doogoo the Baby Elephant and Other
Stories (Bangalore: Unisun, 2005). One of her most recent volumes, Learning from Children What to
Teach Them, was published in 2007. In a similar vein, this volume also focuses on children, delving
further into their psychology with characteristic sympathy and care.
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Contents
About the Author v
Preface ix
Part I General Background 1
1. Introduction 3
2. International Classifications of Psychiatric Disorders 6
3. Child Psychology and Psychopathology from a Developmental Perspective 11
4. Abnormal Child Psychology from a Developmental Perspective 18
5. Psychological Assessment of the Child 25
6. Psychological Therapies, or Counselling with Children 34
Part II Psychological Disorders 47
7. Specific Developmental Delays and Disorders 49
8. Learning Disorders 62
9. Externalizing Disorders: Hyperkinesis and Other Disruptive Behaviours 74
10. Internalizing Disorders: Anxiety, Phobias, Social Withdrawal 86
11. Physical Symptoms of Psychological Origin and Chronic Physical Illness 96
12. Pervasive Developmental Disorders and Childhood Psychoses 107
13. Nature, Causes and Patterns of Disorders in Asian Countries 119
14. Developmental Psychopathology in the Indian Context 126
Part III Counselling Techniques 129
15. Play Therapy 131
16. Art Work 137
17. Psychodynamic Techniques 142
viii Contents
18. Behaviour Therapy and Cognitive Behaviour Therapy 146
19. Supportive Measures 151
20. Working with the Families 155
21. Working with Groups 162
22. Working in Schools 168
Part IV Matching Disorders and Counselling Techniques 179
23. Counselling in General and a Case Illustration of Specific
Developmental (Multiple) Delays 181
24. Attention Deficit Disorders 189
25. Internalizing Disorders 202
26. Externalizing Disorders 212
27. Learning Disorders 216
28. Therapies for Somatization and Chronic Physical Illness in Children 225
29. Children at Risk and Resilience in Childhood 229
30. Special Issues of Counselling/Therapies in the Asian Context 237
Appendix 245
References 257
Index 275
Preface
This book is an ambitious yet necessary effort. It is a product of the experience and thought that
has gone into training professional mental health workers, teachers, lay volunteers and postgraduates
in clinical psychology at the National Institute of Mental Health and Neuro Sciences in Bangalore,
India, since 1976.
In most of Africa and South Asia, children are a neglected population with regard to education and
health, including mental health. While teachers focus on education and paediatricians and physicians
deal with physical problems, the child as a whole is neglected. In a typical Indian scenario, graduates
with or without a degree in psychology start counselling children after attending workshops of a
few hours to a few days. This happens especially because none of the developing countries have
a statutory body to regulate the practice of counselling. In addition, these practitioners often have
no access to libraries, books and even the Internet. To enable counsellors to have easy access to
knowledge and information related to the methodological and practical aspects of their work, I have
tried to create a single sourcebook for counsellors who work with children.
To state simply, this book provides the rudiments of the nature, assessment, causes and treatments
for psychological problems in children. The idea that all these aspects, necessary for counselling,
can be assessed in a similar way led to the development of a tool called the Developmental
Psychopathology Check List (DPCL). In the past six years, this tool has been used for noting down
the basic history of children at a child guidance centre in Bengaluru, where my colleagues, Akila
and Geetha, and I have supervised the work. The DPCL requires some training but not a great deal.
Counselling children is a joyful experience. But it requires some training, some supervision and
a great deal of practical experience, leading to self-learning. In this book I hope to provide the
background material for counsellors to work with children. But it is good to have some expert
supervision, or in the absence of it some peer consultation, so that one gets some feedback when
someone goes wrong. Keeping detailed case notes and reviewing them as the counselling progresses
is one of the best methods of self-learning.
The book covers four themes. Part I introduces the themes of classification of developmental
psychology, psychopathology, assessment and therapies. Part II deals with commonly seen
psychological disorders such as developmental problems, conduct, emotion and learning disorders.
Psychosomatic disorders and psychoses are also dealt with, albeit briefly. Part III discusses methods
