What is pediatric mental health?
Pediatric mental health includes children’s emotional, psychological, and behavioral development. While there are some similarities to adult mental health, it’s important to recognize that children’s mental health has crucial differences.
Some of these differences result from the changes children go through as they grow up. Childhood is a time of rapid transformation, both physically and mentally. There are also considerable alterations in the hormone levels in your child’s body, which can significantly affect their emotions.
What are some common pediatric mental health conditions?
Pediatric mental health providers treat a wide variety of psychiatric and developmental conditions, including:
- Anxiety
- Depression
- Eating disorders
- Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD)
- Social anxiety disorder
- Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD)
- Post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
- Oppositional defiant disorder (ODD)
- Autism spectrum disorder (ASD)
- Developmental disorders
Helping children with these issues often involves seeing a therapist, and some children may require medication. If you’re looking for another way to support your child with their mental health issues, movement therapy is a valuable option.
What benefits does movement therapy offer for pediatric mental health?
There’s been considerable research into how movement and dance help improve mental health. These studies show that movement and dance help your child express their emotions, encourage imagination and creativity, and improve their confidence.
Dancing also increases physical fitness, relieves stress, and helps to improve your child’s gross motor skills (how they walk, run, jump, and so on).
If your child is coping with a mental health condition, movement therapy can help them manage their emotions. Because of the strong link between your child’s body and mind, making changes to their posture and movements can improve their mental health.
If you want to see for yourself, movement therapy with Dr. MOOVES is an engaging and effective choice.
How does Dr. MOOVES help with pediatric mental health?
Dr. MOOVES has developed an innovative app that works on any iPhone. Your child just follows the dances on the app, and cutting-edge motion capture technology analyzes their movements.
The main metrics the app measures include:
- Balance
- Sway
- Stability
- Symmetry
- Synchrony
- Basal support
Improving these functions helps boost your child’s mental strength and can help limit pediatric mental health problems. The app sends you reports on how well your child is doing, or if you’re working with a therapist, the app can email them a results breakdown of the entire 36 movements.
To find out more about Dr. MOOVES A&D and how the movement therapy app could help with pediatric mental health issues, request an appointment and download the app today.
