Promoting Parental Mental Health, Access to Preschool May Reduce MH Inequities in Children

Promoting parental mental health and preschool attendance among socioeconomically disadvantaged children can reduce mental health problems, according to astudy published this week inPediatrics.“Evidence suggests only 9% to 27% of children aged 4 to 13 years with mental health problems access mental health services, with barriers to access disproportionately impacting families experiencing socioeconomic disadvantage,” wrote Sharon Goldfeld, Ph.D., of the Centre for Community Child Heal th at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute in Melbourne, Australia, and colleagues. “Reducing children’s mental health inequities will likely require a coordinated approach by stacking multiple complementary interventions across the various environments in which children grow and live ove r time.”Goldfeld and colleagues drew on data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, a nationally representative sample of 5,107 infants that began in May 2004. Information from parent interviews and/or self-report questionnaires was collected when the children were aged 0 to 1, 2 to 3, 4 to 5, 6 to 7, and 10 to 11 years. Family socioeconomic status was measured during the first year with self-reported annual income, highest education, and occupation level. Families were considered disadvantaged if they were among “the 25% least socioeconomically advantaged families” in the study.When children were aged 4 to 5 years, each child ’s primary caregiver reported on his or her own m...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Source Type: research