Abstract
Parents seeking help for their child’s mental health problem face a complicated system of services. We examined how parents navigate the various services available. Sixty parents contacting a children’s mental health center were interviewed regarding their efforts and rationale in seeking help for their child. On average, in the year prior to the interview parents sought help for two different child problems, contacted five different agencies or professionals for help, and parents and/or children received two different treatments. One fifth of the time parents said they accepted treatments that they did not want. Almost all parents (87%) were simultaneously in contact with more than one agency at some point within the previous year. Future help-seeking models need to capture the iterative referral process that many parents experience.
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Notes
These aggregate data were obtained from the participating centers which may have included some of the patients participating in the current study.
For simplicity, the term agency will be used to refer to agency and professional for the remainder of the article.
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Acknowledgments
D.C. Shanley was supported by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research Doctoral Research Award and G.J. Reid was supported as the Bill and Anne Brock Professor in Child Health. This manuscript is based on a thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of a Masters in Clinical Psychology to the University of Western Ontario. Portions of this manuscript have been presented at the Trillium Primary Care Research Forum, Toronto, Ontario, June, 2002, the Annual meeting of the Canadian Psychological Association, Hamilton, Ontario, June, 2003, and the Annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Toronto, ON, August, 2003. We are much indebted to the help of the intake staff at the participating children’s mental health centers who identified participants for the project. Thanks are also extended to Dr. Judith Belle Brown, Dr. David Wolfe, and Dr. Rod A. Martin, who were members of the Examining Board for the Masters thesis, to Dr. Charles Cunningham for his assistance with the Brief Child and Family Phone Interview (BCFPI) and to Kelly Quinnell who assisted with the coding of parent interviews.
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Shanley, D.C., Reid, G.J. & Evans, B. How Parents Seek Help for Children with Mental Health Problems. Adm Policy Ment Health 35, 135–146 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10488-006-0107-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10488-006-0107-6