TPP 401: Dr. Billy Garvey on Supporting Our Child’s Mental Health Through the Years

My fall season is officially starting today and I’m kicking it off with a conversation with Dr. Billy Garvey on mental health. Billy, a developmental pediatrician with over 20 years’ experience working with children in Australia, met last year while he was traveling around the world on a fellowship to explore the connection between how children are parented and their mental health as adults. One of the outcomes of that fellowship is Billy’s new book, which is called 10 Things I Wish You Knew About Your Child's Mental Health, which he was kind enough to send me an advanced copy of. So I wanted to bring him on the show to talk about that, but really to expand on that initial conversation I had with him but so that you all could be a part of it, too. We covered a lot of ground in this extra long episode, including challenges of accessing mental health support in Australia, the need for true inclusion and what that actually means, the importance of unconditional love for kids, attachment and temperament, the role of self-esteem, and the limitations of certain diagnoses, and much more.

About Dr. Billy Garvey

Dr Billy Garvey is a developmental pediatrician with over 20 years’ experience working with children in a number of settings. He is a senior specialist at one of the largest tertiary pediatric hospitals in the world where he sees families, trains clinicians and other professionals working with children and conducts research in child development and mental health.

Dr Billy’s clinical and research interests include child development and mental health, multidisciplinary collaboration, improving health literacy and promoting community engagement to support all families. He holds clinical, advocacy and research roles in government and not-for-profit organizations at a national, state and local level. He is currently undertaking a PhD piloting a model to support child emotional and behavioral development in primary schools and is a Churchill Fellow exploring how social media can be used to support parenting. He is also the founder of Guiding Growing Minds, a social enterprise that aims to give all children the opportunity to reach their potential and live rich and meaningful lives. The Pop Culture Parenting podcast is part of this vision.

Things you'll learn

• Why access to mental health support for children in Australia is a challenge, with long wait lists and limited availability of specialists
• How unconditional love and support are essential for helping children develop a positive sense of self and navigate challenges, and what that looks like in action
• Why the younger generation shows promise in driving positive change and embracing neurodiversity
• How secure attachment and sensitive parenting contribute to promoting healthy child development, and ways attachment can be strengthened over time
• Why self-esteem is best cultivated through consistent support, celebrating successes, and providing opportunities for growth
• The negative implications (and unhelpfulness) of diagnoses like oppositional defiance disorder (ODD) and conduct disorder (CD)

Resources mentioned

• Dr. Billy Garvey’s website Guiding Growing Minds
• Ten Things I Wish You Knew About Your Child’s Mental Health by Dr. Billy Garvey
• Pop Culture Parenting (podcast)
• Dr. Tina Payne Bryson
• Dr. Mona Delahooke
• Dr. Dan Siegel
• Dr. Bruce Perry
• Thomas Boyce’s The Orchid Child and the Dandelion (Talks at Google)
• Jurassic Park and Co-Regulation (Pop Culture Parenting podcast)
• Forrest Gump and Kids Who Are Different (Pop Culture Parenting podcast)
• Thelma & Louise and Mental Health First-Aid (Pop Culture Parenting podcast)
• Blade Runner and Neurodiversity (Pop Culture Parenting podcast)

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