Main description:

This timely collection explores how children display social competence in talking about their mental health and wellbeing. The authors analyse recorded conversations of young people's interactions with professionals in which they disclose particular mental health concerns and their ways of coping, drawing on insights from ethnomethodology, conversation analysis and discursive psychology. Across a diverse range of institutional and international settings, chapters examine how children and young people employ interactional strategies to demonstrate their competence. The research reveals how young people resist or protect claims that they lack competence, especially in contexts where they might be seen as seeking or asking for support, or when their (dis)abilities and mental health is explicitly up for discussion.

Each chapter concludes with a reflection on the methodological, professional and practical implications of the findings, highlighting areas where future research is necessary and addressing the empirical findings from the authors professional vision, facilitating innovative dialogue between conversation analytic research and professional vision. This book will be of great value to academics and professionals interested in how children express themselves, particularly in relation to their mental wellbeing.

Contents:

Chapter 1: Professional practices and children's social competence in mental health talk; Danby, Lamerichs, Bateman & Ekberg.- Chapter 2: Testing children's degrees and domains of social competence in child mental health assessments; O'Reilly, Kiyimba & Hutchby.- Chapter 3:Children's competence and wellbeing in sensitive research: when video-stimulated accounts lead to dispute; Theobald and Danby.- Chapter 4: Initiating earthquake talk with young children: Children's social competence and the use of resources; Bateman and Danby.- Chapter 5: "Well I had nothing weird going on": Children's displays of social competence in psychological research interviews; Lamerichs, Alisic & Schasfoort.- Chapter 6: Misleading the alleged offender: child witnesses' displays of competence in police interviews; Jol, Stommel & Spooren.- Chapter 7: The social organization of echolalia in clinical encounters involving a child diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder; Kawashima and Maynard.- Chapter 8: Children's social competence and mental health talk: an epilogue; Osvaldsson Cromdal & Cromdal.