Status of Child and Adolescents Psychiatry in State of Uttar Pradesh

Abstract

India has one of the largest numbers of young people in the world, with 35.3% of the total population falling between the ages of 0 and 14 years. Childhood is a time of mental and physical development and anything affecting the development of a child will have negative consequences as an adult. As reported from various surveys prevalence of mental morbidity vary from 1.8 to 15.2% in children and adolescents. Developing countries such as India have certain risk factors that contribute to additional children’s issues, such as socioeconomic inequality leading to reduced access to education, child labour and these problems are even more severe in low socioeconomic states like Uttar Pradesh. To attend to the needs of such large population the manpower and infrastructure is not adequate. The paper will review the status of child and adolescent mental health services in our state.