• Child psychiatry is concerned with the assessment and treatment of children's emotional and behavioral problems.
• Over the past two decades psychiatry has increasingly turned to biological explanations for the etiology of mental disorders. (Keltner N L, 1996)
• These problems are very common with prevalence rates of 10 20% in several community studies.
• Psychological disturbance in childhood is most usefully defined as an abnormality in at least one of three areas; emotions, behavior or relationships.
• In childhood the distinction between disturbance and normality is often imprecise or arbitrary.
• Isolated symptoms are common and not pathological. Another distinctive feature of childhood psychiatric disturbance is that several factors rather than one contribute to the development of disturbance