‘How are you?’ Thinking about the development of health and illness behaviour in children

This conference will aim towards a close examination of the language of illness, allowing time to discuss how we conceptualise disease and so develop our clinical practice from a developmental perspective.

We have brought together three very distinguished and internationally renowned clinicians to help us consider a range of perplexing questions, such as:

• In what ways are ‘illness’ concepts introduced to children and incorporated into the socialisation of children leading to a particular view about health and illness? Does how we talk about illness have as important consequences as the methods we use to cure it?
• How does a child learn effective ways of conveying to others that he/she is ill?
• Is there a healthy way to be ill? And conversely is there an ill way to be healthy? And if so why does a child adopt one particular style of behaviour in favour of another?
• How does a parent/teacher/GP/nurse tell if a child’s stomachache is ‘real’? And what does this mean?
• How does a family or individual manage and care for a child with a severe and even a terminal illness?
• We are used to thinking about nervous stomachaches but what if the condition is more severe. Can a more severe illness be exacerbated or even caused by our thoughts and feelings and, if so, how does this behaviour arise in children?
• When a child is diagnosed as physically ill why do some children stoically manage and others complain to the point of irritation?
• Why are some children seemingly endlessly ill with undiagnosed complaints? Is there a special illness language that relies on the use of physical symptoms to convey psychological discomfort?
• How is it best to manage these different presentations?

This conference is intended to appeal to a multi- disciplinary audience and will be relevant to professionals working with children and adolescence whether in a hospital setting, GP surgery, school or other setting.

The Key Note Speakers

Jeremy Turk is Professor of Developmental Psychiatry at St. George’s, University of London. He is Clinical Team Leader on their Child & Adolescent Mental Health Learning Disability Service and Trustwide Clinical Lead for Child & Adolescent Mental Health Services, as well as being Consultant Psychiatrist to the National Autistic Society Centre for Social & Communication Disorders. He has longstanding clinical and academic interests in the mental health needs of children and young people particularly with intellectual disability and other developmental disorders, and their families, and has written and presented extensively on the causes, evaluations, supports and interventions for such problems. He is first author of the latest edition of the standard textbook, Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, A Developmental Approach.

Roger Higgs, MBE,is a recently retired GP and Professor Emeritus at Kings College London. He developed a single handed surgery in south London into being a family orientated group practice with attached psychological and child health staff. He founded the Dept of GP and Primary Care at Kings, and his (shared) innovations include the Lambeth Community Care Centre, primary care in A&E, teaching Medicine in primary care and the Journal of Medical Ethics. He has published in medical ethics and psychosocial care. He is part of a group of therapists and GPs running courses about joint working and is on the Ethics and Governance Council of UK Biobank. He is married with two grown up children and a grandson.

Simon Wilkinson is a child and adolescent psychiatrist and leads the adolescent unit at the Sogn Centre for Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University Hospital, Olso, Norway. He is a Yorkshire man by birth and educated and trained in Cambridge, London and Edinburgh. At Cambridge his research project explored children’s views of the causality of illness. He was previously responsible for consultation and liaison services and a service to a resource center for people with rare handicaps. He also has experience of developing a hospital as a learning organization. Amongst other publications he is author of The Child’s World of Illness and Coping and Complaining: Attachment and the Language of dis-ease.