Human rights of children and adolescent patients using mental health services

Abstract: Child and adolescent mental health is the capacity to achieve and maintain optimal psychological functioning and wellbeing. It is directly related to the degree of age-appropriate bio-psychosocial development achieved using available resources. There are a number of factors that can affect the mental health of a child or adolescent. Broadly speaking, these can be divided into risk and protective factors. The former refers to factors that increase the probability of mental health difficulties, while the latter refers to factors that mediate the effects of risk exposure. As the term “bio-psychosocial” in the above definition suggest, these risk and protective factors can exist in the biological, psychological and social domains