Assessment and treatment for children and teenagers aged 4 to 18 — behavioural difficulty, school refusal, developmental concerns, anxiety and low mood. A parent or guardian attends the whole consultation.
Nearly every parent who books this appointment has spent months being told to wait. He'll grow out of it. She's just sensitive. All children are like this at that age. Sometimes that advice is right, and one of the useful outcomes of an assessment is being told so clearly.
What tips it from waiting to assessing is usually persistence and spread. A difficulty that has lasted more than six months, that shows up at school and at home rather than only in one place, and that is starting to cost the child friendships or schooling, is worth having looked at properly.
These come up again and again. If any of them sounds like your house, you are not describing something unusual.
Every morning there is a stomach ache. By ten o'clock he is completely fine.
Parent of an 8-year-oldHer teachers say she is bright but not applying herself. We have been hearing that for four years.
Parent of an 11-year-oldHe was always a handful. I assumed it was me doing something wrong.
Parent of a 6-year-oldChildren's difficulties almost never have a single cause. Most of the time several things are stacked, and the assessment is about working out which ones are actually load-bearing.
Conditions like ADHD and autism are neurodevelopmental — the brain is wiring differently, from early on. They are not caused by parenting, screens or diet, though all three can make things better or worse.
Most childhood psychiatric conditions run in families to some degree. It is common for a parent to recognise their own childhood in what the assessment uncovers.
Waiting is sometimes the right call, and a good assessment will tell you that. But where there is something to treat, childhood is when treatment does the most work — because the difficulty is still shaping how the child sees themselves.
The first appointment is longer than an adult's and is structured around the parent as much as the child. Children are poor historians of their own development; you are the record.
Pregnancy, birth, milestones, illnesses, and how each stage compared with siblings. Bring the immunisation card and any old reports.
Report cards and anything a teacher has written. Teachers see the child in a setting you do not, and their observations often carry the assessment.
For older children and teenagers, a portion of the consultation is one-to-one. Adolescents rarely say the same things in front of a parent.
For most children the plan is mainly behavioural and educational — changes at school, changes in routine, and coaching for parents on responding to specific behaviours. Medication is a smaller part of child psychiatry than people expect, and it is never the first thing reached for in a young child.
Where medication is warranted — in moderate to severe ADHD, for instance — it is started at a low dose with close review, and the decision is revisited every few months rather than assumed to continue.
For anyone under 18, an adult with legal responsibility for the child must be present for the entire consultation, online or in person. This is required under India's telemedicine guidelines and is not something that can be waived.
Longer than an adult appointment. Includes the written plan and a note for the school if one would help. Reviews are ₹800.
No. Assessment from age 4 is appropriate, and for developmental concerns earlier is better — the interventions that help most work best when started young. What changes with age is the method, not whether it is worth doing.
A diagnosis is a clinical record, held confidentially under the Mental Healthcare Act, 2017, and shared with nobody without your written consent — not the school, not relatives. Many parents find the opposite is true: a name for the difficulty ends years of the child being called lazy or difficult.
Book a consultation for yourself first. Discussing how to approach it with a psychiatrist is a legitimate use of the appointment, and it is often more productive than a forced first visit that the teenager spends silent.
Yes for most assessments, with a parent present throughout. For young children where observation of play and interaction matters, an in-person appointment gives a better assessment, and she will arrange one or refer you to a child psychiatrist in her network near you.
For a parent who recognises themselves
Common in adolescents
Already diagnosed elsewhere
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