ABSTRACT
The rapidly changing demographic landscape of the United States, brought about by immigration, has resulted in an increasingly multiracial and multicultural population. These changes have become accentuated by the phenomenon of globalization, which occurs when there is an acceleration of movement of people, ideas, and products between nations, which also brings about an increase in the complexity of everyday problems. This article discusses the concept of identity formation and how the stresses of immigration and acculturation and the factors of resiliency and risk affect immigrant children, adolescents, and their families, so that clinicians treating these populations can be prepared to understand divergent, and often well-hidden, world views, which may cause intrafamilial conflicts and interfere with the child's developmental process.
Subject(s)
Acculturation , Adaptation, Psychological , Child Development , Emigration and Immigration , Adaptation, Psychological/ethics , Adolescent , Child , Emigrants and Immigrants/psychology , Ethnopsychology , Family Characteristics , Humans , Internationality , Life Change Events , Multilingualism , Psychopathology/ethics , Self Concept , Social Identification , United StatesABSTRACT
Corticosteroid treatment is an important therapeutic modality for many pediatric medical conditions including acute lymphoblastic leukemia. However, steroid-induced behavioral and mood abnormalities are common and potentially disabling adverse effects that have been widely reported in the pediatric literature. From this case series, we report the efficacy of risperidone in 3 children with acute lymphoblastic leukemia who developed steroid-related mood and psychotic symptoms during treatment with prednisone and dexamethasone. Risperidone is an effective short-term pharmacologic agent for controlling steroid-related psychiatric adverse effects when cessation or dose reduction of steroid therapy is not an option.
