Child Psychology | Case Study

Running Head: CHILD PSYCHOLOGY
CHILD PSYCHOLOGY
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Authors Note

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Jessica is 14 years old and she has a history of normal childhood development and
was happy till 12 years old and it is highly critical to understand that the various aspects of
the childhood development as in the mental health and sociocultural as well as the
psychosocial parameters was healthy and normal until and unless the traumatic event of her
father’s death disrupted the whole developmental process of Jessica (Hamblen & Barnett,
2016). Jessica lives with her family and it is highly critical to be understood that the various
aspects of the psychosocial disruption that is currently happening in her life, can be attributed
to the feelings of detachment and loss that has embarked from death of her father. She lives
with her single mother whose name is Mary and her brother whose name is Jonathan who is
younger in age than her. The major key problems as well as the factors that are being
involved in the presentation of mental condition symptoms in Jessica can be attributed to the
premature death of her father, previous or prior to which she has been doing really well in her
life and showed normal level of all round cognitive and mental development (Wang et al.,
2017). Coping, as identified is a critical area of problem or rather ‘negative coping’ can be
considered as the major issue that is involved in the disruption process of Jessica and more
importantly, it can said as elucidated or pointed out by the mother of the subject that while
Jonathan coped well with the death of their father, the same causes a great distortion in the
mental health dynamics of Jessica leading to various other problems (Bandelow, Michaelis &
Wedekind, 2017). It has to be understood that the subject of the case study who is Jessica is
suffering from a lot of intrinsic and extrinsic problems that is causing her symptoms to dilate
and being put into a never ending loop of problems. Firstly, the first major problem is social
isolation and anger issues. It can be rather said that she has deep seated emotional issues and
that she is not being able to control her anger and is having constant outburst of emotions
towards her family, at her friends in the school and at the teachers in the school as well. It is
very important and interesting to note that she is aware that she is not being able to control

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her emotions and it is becoming more difficult for control her mood as well. She locks herself
in her room and hardly finds it very easy to communicate her feelings to her parent or her
brother or to her friends in the school as well. She has got a best friend or rather say a close
friend though whose name is Tom and it is to be noted that even with him, she has
demonstrated emotional issues as well. In the words of Tom, she is either very optimistic or
energetic with her life as if she is ‘too much happy’ or very low and depressed with her life as
if she is suffering from a very low mood (Cook et al., 2017). This can be attributed to the fact
that she is having misbalance of emotions and the arousal of her negative emotions is
happening at a very high rate certainly. The other aspect of the emotional conflict can be
recognised from the fact that she used to be a very jovial and caring person, playing with
other children, very extrovert and happy with life and post the death of her father – the
situation with her mental condition has turned upside down and she is unable to control her
emotions such as happiness or especially the negative ones such as anger and the sadness,
depression that is leading to the causation of the major problems such as mood swings, social
isolation, emotional outbursts and also low self-esteem and shifting self-image problems
being triggered by the psychosocial development age she is in 13-21 years in addition to the
major loss of parental support resulting from the death of her father. Expanding or analysing
the problems further, it can be said that the psychosocial development that is integral of all
human beings and Erik Erikson’s stages of psychosocial development provides the major key
to the understanding to the development of Jessica’s symptoms. In the childhood, from the
period of 5 to 13 years the conflict which is predominant, is industry to inferiority and the
competency that is developed is competency and till this stage, Jessica was fine enough, with
cognitive development and the development of her psyche that can be considered normal in
DSM-5 parameters and it can be said that she came out of the psychosocial developementary
stage as a competent person as she reciprocated social feelings with others and had positive

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interactions with her friends and family as well. Since the death of her father, the event that
tool place when she was just 12 years old – traumatized her psyche and mentality to a great
extent. She developed a negative psyche or mindset and a negative attitude for the world and
the sadness that was never transformed or reconciled caused her cope in a more negative way
following the death of her father. Analysing further, it can be said that according to Erik
Eriksson’s stages of psychosocial development – from the period of 13 to 21 years the
conflict is more built around the development of an identity or a confusion resulting from the
non-development of a proper identity and this is where the shifting self-identity and self-
concept begins. Thus it is critical to consider the virtue that is ought to be developed in this
psychosocial stage and the name of the virtue is loyalty. This is the central problem that has
affected the case of Jessica who finds it very difficult to control her anger and aggression for
the social surrounding irrespective of whether they are family members that she lives with
every day or whether they are teachers or friends she has in school. The central problem is
that she had a major role to play as a daughter to her parent and when her father died
suddenly that she was not expecting, this hurt her severely and she started to feel confused
about her role or identity as a daughter to her father and this identity loss affected her
complete identity as a person, in a very substantial manner indeed (Panella, 2016). The more
critical problem is that despite having a family that is caring and affectionate towards her, she
is falling short of reciprocating the positive feelings that is surrounding her. She is losing
control but feeling bad as well that she is not being able to care for anyone like before and
she is dipping into more sadness and negative feelings with self-guilt that she is hurting
others unreasonably enough. She is also aware that she lacks judgement in most of the time
of when or how to react to things and she is not in control of herself as well. She had a good
relationship with her father and this has caused a more complex relationship issue or crisis
when her father died. She use to visit the music classes and take up the swimming classes