#86: When does my child need a mental health day?

with helen egger, md

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In this episode we discuss…

  • How we should talk about resilience 

  • Child and Adolescent mental health in the pandemic 

  • Why it’s important to address parent’s mental health

  • Why we need to talk about mental health more 

  • When to be concerned 

  • What we can learn from a child’s behavior 

  • How important early intervention can be 

  • Good uses of child mental health days 

There is no health without mental health, and yet we don’t often think to take our kids (or ourselves!) for mental health check-ups. Pediatric mental health struggles are often overlooked, misunderstood, and stigmatized, but Dr. Helen Eggers is changing that with a new Teletherapy platform for kids and families.


Dr. Helen Egger is a child psychiatrist, renowned research scientist in early childhood mental health, and an academic leader. After 30+ years in academic medicine, she co-founded Little Otter with her daughter, Rebecca Egger, to transform how children and families get access to high-quality mental health care. The foundation of Little Otter is Dr. Egger’s clinical, scientific, and operational expertise in evidence-based, high-quality pediatric mental health.

 

Prior to joining Little Otter, Dr. Egger was Chair of the Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at NYU Langone Health (NYULH), the Arnold Simons Professor, and Director of the NYU Langone Child Study Center. As Chair, she led the department’s large, multi-site, private and public system of clinical care staffed by 145 providers. At NYULH, Dr. Egger also founded and led a digital child mental health research lab called the WonderLab. Before moving to NYULH, Dr. Egger was a tenured faculty member at Duke Health where she founded the Early Childhood Mental Health Lab within the Center for Developmental Epidemiology. As creator of the first interview to assess preschool mental health and seminal NIMH-funded longitudinal studies, Dr. Egger has shaped the science and clinical practice of toddler/preschool mental health. At Duke, Dr. Egger also served as Vice-Chair and Chief of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry and led a transformation of clinical care called Duke Integrated Pediatric Mental Health. 

Resources mentioned or recommended:

Jordan Best