Citation

Yamazaki K. Seishin Shinkeigaku Zasshi 2002; 104(10): 789-801.

Affiliation

Dept. of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science, Tokai University School of Medicine.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2002, Nihon Seishin Shinkei Gakkai)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

12607920

Abstract

Accompanying the fall in birth rate, problems pertaining to the child's mind such as school in attendance, bullying, violence in the school, intrafamilial violence, eating disorders, substance abuse, and child abuse have rocketed and diversified, in addition to affecting increasingly lower age groups. The importance of child and adolescent psychiatry has never been more profound, but our country, without a chair in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry in the medical school framework, and lacking recognition of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry as a clinical department has undoubtedly become an underdeveloped country in terms of child and adolescent psychiatric care. The medical schools have been in the process of review and reorganization these past few years. The range of mental science is wide, and despite being a major discipline constituting one of the two arms of medical science together with somatic medicine, it is regarded as a minor existence in our country. This is the time to re-establish mental science, with areas such as child and adolescent psychiatry, geriatric psychiatry, social psychiatry, and crime psychiatry placed on an equal footing with general psychiatry. Turning our eyes on the world, the children are being robbed of their mental health as refugees, through child labor, starvation, and civil war. The demand of this age is true symbiosis, surpassing differences in race, religion, language, and culture, which is probably the indispensable element in the quest for a happy future for the children of this age.

Language: ja