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Welcome to our Sunflower guide and resources page. It has been designed to help you discover more about child mental health and emotional wellbeing in order to help you find the best support for the child or young person you have in mind. This is an ongoing selection of resources which will be updated and expanded regularly so if the information you are seeking isn't immediately available, it is likely to be added soon.

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Mental Health Concerns

Anger Issues

Anger is a normal and healthy emotion, however some children and young people find it harder than others to regulate their big feelings of anger, which can lead to...

Anxiety

Anxiety is a blanket term that can cover a whole range of challenges children and young people struggle with. Anxiety goes beyond ordinary worries and fears though it can be difficult to determine when these cross over into anxiety requiring more support.

Bipolar Disorder

Bipolar is a mood disorder where people have episodes of extremely low mood and then episodes of mania which can last for days or weeks.

Body Dysmorphia

Body dysmorphia is where the sufferer is preoccupied with perceived imperfections and flaws in their appearance, which causes significant distress and limits quality of life. It is often perceived that people with BDD are vain for obsessive over their body, when, they often see themselves as deformed, ugly and unworthy.

Depersonalisation

Depersonalisation is where people feel separate from their body and feel they are observing themselves, thoughts and actions. This may occur with derealisation and be short lived or more chronic.

Derealisation

Where the world around the person feels unreal and people in it seem unreal or lifeless. This may occur with depersonalisation or separately and may last for a short time or be more chronic.

Developmental Co-ordination Disorder (Dyspraxia)

Dyspraxia is a neurological condition that affects the coordination of fine and gross motor skills. It may also cause challenges in spatial awareness, memory, organising themselves, perception and judgement.

Dissociative Amnesia

Involves not being able to remember specific information, times or significant events where there is no neurological reason for not being able to do so. It may also involve losing chunks of time with no recollection as to what the person might have been up to in that time.

Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID)

Dissociative Identity Disorder (formerly known as multiple personality disorder) involves the person having two or more separate identities that can take control of the ‘host’ body. They may or may not know about each other.

Dissociative Issues

Dissociative issues exist on a spectrum, but all involve the person dissociating from their thoughts, feelings, sensations and/ or lived experiences as a means of survival and to regulate states of extreme overwhelm and distress.

Dysgraphia

Dysgraphia is a neurodevelopmental learning difficult that may result in children finding it difficult to form letters, stay ‘in the lines,’ organising and expressing themselves on paper, or struggling with illegible handwriting.

Dyslexia

Dyslexia is the neurodevelopmental language-based learning difficulty that causes challenges with comprehension, word recognition and decoding and spelling.

Eco Anxiety

Some children and young people experience significant anxiety and distress around ecological issues. As they become increasingly aware of the impact of humans on the planet and the lack of action by world leaders, increasingly young people are experiencing intense distress and despair over human inertia to act and the potential consequences for their future.

Emotionally Based School Avoidance

Emotionally Based School Avoidance is when a child or young person experiences extreme anxiety around school to the point where they cannot engage with it as their levels of distress are so high. There may be factors of social, performance, panic and general anxiety present.

Encopresis

Encopresis is repeated pooing in inappropriate places beyond the age (4) children are deemed to be able to control this behaviour in a neurotypical child. This may be due to chronic constipation which results in leakage and is involuntary.

Enuresis

Enuresis is where a child repeatedly wets themselves beyond the age (5) they are considered able to control this behaviour in a neurotypical child.

Foetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS)

Foetal Alcohol Syndrome (FAS) is a condition which is linked to drinking alcohol in pregnancy and affects the way a baby’s brain develops.

Food / Eating Issues

There are a range of different eating disorders that children and young people might develop. Sometimes a child’s symptoms do not fit neatly into one category and they might have a combination of issues that fall across multiple categories, but do not quite meet the diagnostic criteria one one.

General Anxiety

General anxiety is recurrent worries about lots of things, that can be accompanied by a sense of restlessness and edginess. This anxiety can be ‘free floating’ and ‘attach,’ itself to different things.

Global Developmental Delay

The term ‘developmental delay’ or ‘global development delay’ is used when a child takes longer to reach certain development milestones than other children their age.

Health Anxiety

Children or young people experiencing health anxiety are continually anxious about their or other peoples health. Sometimes parents can experience health anxiety about their children’s health.

Neurodevelopmental and SEND needs

Common issues in the field can include...

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) have repetitive obsessive, distressing thoughts and feelings. This can lead to compulsions or rituals that develop as ways to try and manage the unbearable anxiety the child or young person feels.

Panic Attacks

A panic attack is a sudden overwhelm of intense feelings of anxiety and fear. There may be no obvious trigger and they can happen anywhere. They may be noticeable due to external symptoms such as...

Pathological Demand Avoidance (PDA)

PDA in the UK is understood as a profile on the autism spectrum, however many children may present as demand avoidant due to anxiety generated from other unmet needs.

Performance Anxiety/ Exam Stress

Some children and young people experience a significant degree of performance anxiety around the pressure of testing or having to perform. This can come from external sources such as parents, teachers, coaches etc but may also be internalised from the child’s internal expectations of themselves. This may be exacerbated by societal and familial narratives around success, failure and fear of the consequences.

Psychosis

During a psychotic episode people can lose touch with reality. Their thoughts might be delusional, paranoid or incoherent, such as believing people are following or out to get them or believing they are somebody else, with special powers or knowledge.

Schizophrenia

Schizophrenia is a serious but treatable and manageable mental illness of which psychosis is a main symptom. Some people believe schizophrenia is having a split personality or are violent, which is not true.

Selective Mutism

Selective mutism is an anxiety-based issue that prevents a child from speaking in certain situations to certain people. They may speak normally at home, but be predominantly or completely mute at school.

Self Harm

Self-harm can be something a child or young person resorts to to cope with overwhelming feelings that they don’t feel they can express in any other way. It can also be a way of punishing themselves.

Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD)

Sensory Processing Disorder (SPD), is a neurodevelopmental challenge that results from the brain’s inability to integrate certain information received from the body’s sensory systems.

Separation Anxiety

Many children experience separation anxiety at different stages of development. For some it may be short lived until the child adjusts (a phase) For others it may be more chronic and continue beyond the baby and toddler stage. This includes extreme anxiety around the idea of being separated from a parent/carer and can lead to school avoidance and extreme distress.

Social Anxiety

Children and young people affected by social anxiety find social situations, interactions with people and fears of being scrutinised or watched by other. This can create feelings of inadequacy, embarrassment, shame, self- consciousness, judgement.

Tourettes Syndrome (TS)

Tourettes Syndrome (TS) is a neurological (brain) condition. The main signs of TS are motor and vocal tics.

Types of Therapy

Therapy Types for Children and Young People

Knowing who or where to turn to for mental health support for a child or young person can feel daunting. With so many different ‘types’ of therapist, it can be really confusing as to where to start and so we have created a Sunflower Guide that might help.