Fact Sheets

• ADHD - Children and teens with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (AD/HD) may be overactive, and be unable to pay attention and stay on task.
• Anxiety Disorders - All children feel anxious at times—these are normal and usually short-lived anxieties. But some children suffer from anxieties severe enough to interfere with the daily activities of childhood or adolescence.
• Asperger's Syndrome - Asperger's is a neurobiological disorder that can impact behavior, sensory systems, and visual and auditory processing.
• Bipolar Disorder - Bipolar disorder, also known as manic-depressive illness, is a brain disorder that causes unusual shifts in a person's mood, energy, and ability to function. Different from the normal ups and downs that everyone goes through, the symptoms of bipolar disorder are severe.
• Conduct Disorder - Children and adolescents with conduct disorder are highly visible, demonstrating a complicated group of behavioral and emotional problems. Serious, repetitive, and persistent misbehavior is the essential feature of this disorder.
• Depression - All children feel sad or blue at times, but feelings of sadness with great intensity that persist for weeks or months may be a symptom of major depressive disorder or dysthymic disorder (chronic depression).
• Eating Disorders - Nearly all of us worry about our weight at some time in our lives. However, some individuals become so obsessed with their weight and the need to be thin that they develop an eating disorder. The two most common eating disorders are anorexia nervosa and bulimia nervosa.
• FASD - Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders (FASD) refers to the brain damage and physical birth defects caused by a woman drinking alcohol during pregnancy.
• Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder - Children with OCD may have obsessive thoughts and impulses that are recurrent, persistent, intrusive, and senseless—they may, for instance, worry about contamination from germs.
• Oppositional Defiant Disorder - Children with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) seem angry much of the time. They are quick to blame others for mistakes and act in negative, hostile, and vindictive ways.
• PTSD - Children who are involved in or who witness a traumatic event that involved intense fear, helplessness, or horror are at risk for developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
• Reactive Attachment Disorder - The essential feature of reactive attachment disorder (RAD) is a markedly disturbed and developmentally inappropriate social relatedness with peers and adults in most contexts. RAD begins before age 5 and is associated with grossly inadequate or pathological care that disregards the child's basic emotional and physical needs.
• Schizophrenia - Schizophrenia is a medical illness that causes a person to think and act strangely. The symptoms of schizophrenia include hallucinations (hearing and seeing things that are not there), delusions (fixed false beliefs); and difficulties in organizing their thoughts.
• Tourette's Syndrome - Tourette Syndrome (TS) is a neurological disorder characterized by tics involuntary, rapid, sudden movements and vocalizations (though they may not occur simultaneously) that occur repeatedly in the same way.
• COMPLETE SET

Fact sheets graciously provided by Minnesota Association for Children's Mental Health (MACMH), located at 165 Western Avenue N, Suite 2, St. Paul, MN 55102.
Please visit http://www.macmh.org for more information. 

Medication Fact Sheets

The NAMI.org website provides fact sheets and general information on psychotropic medication. Click here for more information.