Handbook of Child Health Assessment

In the literature on child health adjustment, this is intended to be the first broad-scale handbook that deals with methods of assessing health status in children on all levels - physical, psychological, intellectual, temperamental, familial and educational. It also presents discussions of special techniques used for specific health problems and for screening and prevention. "The Handbook of Child Health Assessment" comprises an up-to-date compendium of techniques for determining the psychosocial adaptation of children and adolescents with acute and chronic illnesses. The information is presented from a 'systems' perspective on child health, which implies that measurement must be multidimensional and that it should penetrate to varied levels of analysis. Further, the systems point of view implies that no single target - whether symptom expression, coping or family dynamics - is seen as more central than any other. The handbook examines the psychosocial correlates of children's health and the diverse relationships between assessment and treatment. In addition, a key section is devoted to prevention-oriented assessment.
Issues and directions in professional training for child health assessment are discussed in the appendices.