Peculiarities of Informing Parents about Mental Disorders of Their Minor Children

Abstract

The law enforcement agencies of Ukraine conduct preventive work on psychological and pedagogical support with both minors from socially problematic families and parents whose children need enhanced psychological attention and support. This work is accomplished by juvenile prevention employees. The subject matter of this article is the features of informing parents about the mental illness of their minor children. We aim to provide clear recommendations to juvenile prevention employees or psychologists on increasing their psychological competence in working with families as part of preventive measures. It is applied not only to minors who are registered with neurologists and psychiatrists. These are children with residual-organic cerebral inefficiency of the central nervous system. These are the so-called residual manifestations of the transferred harms in the course of the formation of the central nervous system of a child. The difficulty is that most parents do not agree with the need to take action on their children with residual organic problems, hoping that the child will outgrow over time the minor symptoms, from their point of view, that are manifested now. But, unfortunately, our observations indicate that a child with these features has a deformed character without proper care, which, in turn, can affect his or her future life. Therefore, juvenile prevention employees and psychologists need to carry out such explanatory work in order to facilitate the process of adaptation of minors to the conditions of the social environment without the risk of embarking on an illegal way of life.

During a ten-year experiment in observing families who were informed about the condition of their children’s central nervous system, received clear recommendations on the proper adaptation of minors to social conditions, we came to certain conclusions that such work was extremely important for the prevention of juvenile delinquency. Therefore, we emphasize the need to disseminate these recommendations among juvenile prevention employees and psychologists in order to continue their work with parents whose children have residual-organic cerebral insufficiency of the central nervous system.