About one in five children and adolescents suffers from a mental, emotional or behavioural disorder that is severe enough to seriously affect the young person's daily functioning at home, school or within the community.
Here are the most common conditions:
Anxiety disorders
are the most frequently occurring mental-health problem, affecting about 6.5 per cent of young people.
Everyone feels anxious from time to time but a disorder can occur when anxiety doesn't go away, causes distress, is out of proportion, or interferes with daily living.
There are various conditions, including separation anxiety disorder, social phobia and panic disorder.
Depression
affects about five per cent of young people under the age of 19.
While being sad occasionally is normal, depression is diagnosed when it persists, interferes with a person's ability to function and leads to thought of death or suicide.
Conduct disorder
affects between three and five per cent of children and adolescents.
A child with conduct disorder has both emotional and behavioural problems and will often take dangerous risks.
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
occurs in three to five per cent of children and youth. It typically begins before age seven and can continue into adulthood.
Many children are inattentive, impulsive and hyperactive, and they have trouble in school and interacting with their peers.
Eating disorders
are most common among teenage girls. Anorexia affects about one per cent of adolescent girls and bulimia about three per cent of girls, along with a much smaller number of boys.
Teens with eating disorders tend to be perfectionists with very low self-esteem.
Schizophrenia
affects about 0.1 per cent of children but it can be severely disabling.
Young people with schizophrenia find it hard to control the way they think and act.
Bipolar disorder
typically develops in late adolescence or early adulthood and even in children (less than 0.1 per cent).
While everyone goes through ups and downs of emotion, bipolar disorder causes dramatic mood swings, often for prolonged periods.
Source: Children's Mental Health Ontario
