Pediatric Behavioral Health
East Tennessee Children's Hospital Pediatric Behavioral Health addresses health and illness issues in children, adolescents and families. Psychology and mental health involves treating your child’s physical, social, emotional and developmental needs, including depression and anxiety. That’s why our experts treat the whole patient with family-centered care.
Children's Hospital has consolidated its behavioral health services in one convenient location, right on the hospital campus at Koppel Plaza. Our newly created East Tennessee Children's Hospital Pediatric Behavioral Health combines the departments listed below, and will also be a future home for Pediatric Psychiatric services.
Koppel Plaza, Suite 410
2100 Clinch Ave
Knoxville, TN 37916
Pediatric Behavioral Health Services
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Roles of Pediatric Psychologists
Children’s Hospital’s pediatric psychologists play different roles for our patients. Depending on your child’s needs, our specialists can support your family as an inpatient, outpatient, or during a visit to one of our clinics.
Inpatients
Our pediatric psychologists work with children during their stay at Children’s Hospital on a case-by-case basis. Sometimes a patient’s care may need psychological support (for example, eating disorders and non-epileptic seizures). In these cases, our experts work with families and patients to make sure your child recovers quickly and fully.
Clinics
Children’s Hospital has several referral-based clinics and programs. Our clinics combine physicians and specialists from different areas to treat a child’s whole health. Pediatric psychology is often included in these clinics, if your child’s primary care provider recommends it. Follow-up with a pediatric psychologist can happen in clinic, at our psychologists’ practice in our Medical Office Building (MOB), or at a community agency.
Outpatients
Patients can be referred to this office from specialists, primary care practices, other therapists or directly from family. They are treated in our psychology office in the Medical Office Building (MOB) on Children’s Hospital’s main campus, or at the Rehab Center off of Westland Drive. Common reasons for referrals include:
- History with Neonatal Abstinence Syndrome (NAS)
- Anxiety
- School avoidance
- Depression
- Asperger’s syndrome
- Tourette’s syndrome
- Picky eating
Because of their limited outpatient capacity, our pediatric psychology office accepts patients who are less likely to be served in the community, including those with chronic medical conditions and the very young.
How Pediatric Psychology Can Help
Pediatric psychology addresses physical, cognitive, social, and emotional functioning and development as they relate to health and illness issues in children, adolescents, and families. We explore the interrelationship between psychological and physical well-being of children, adolescents, and families including psychosocial and developmental factors contributing to the etiology, course, treatment, and outcome of pediatric conditions.
The demands of complex medical problems can place an extraordinary amount of stress on children and their families. The goal of a pediatric psychologist is to help ensure that children and families who experience these demands continue to develop appropriately and function well, both behaviorally and psychologically, despite their medical condition(s). We provide two aspects of service related to patients’ care: assessment and intervention. First, we can assess for problematic behavior, emotion coping, and/or communication that might interfere with the child receiving ideal medical care. These problems may exist within the individual child, within the larger family context, or within the complex interactions between child and family. Our expertise is in assessing for problems within the complexity of child and family to identify a definable problem or set of problems that can be addressed. Next, we can employ evidence-based therapeutic techniques, including behavior analysis and cognitive-behavioral therapies, to develop a psychosocial treatment plan address those problems. Examples include:
- Teaching caregivers to foster healthy behavior, adaptive physical functioning, and positive psychological adjustment in their children with chronic health conditions.
- Teaching children how to cope with everyday situations along with their medical problems. We also help them learn methods for managing symptoms of depression, anxiety, and pain.
- Helping children and families overcome challenges that prevent them from following medical procedures.
- Teaching caregivers how to handle problematic behavior displayed by their child. These may be resulting from their child’s necessary healthcare routines but may also be preexisting behavior problems that have been exacerbated by their medical condition(s).
- Teaching parents and healthcare professionals to use behavioral and cognitive-behavioral strategies that help children cope with and adjust to their medical conditions and to participate in their own medical care.
To contact the Pediatric Psychology Department, please call 865-343-6976.
