Assessing the Effectiveness of Child Mental Health Treatment
Child mental health treatment is a growing area of clinical research, and there are many tools available to measure the success of these interventions. The US Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) developed the National Quality Strategy to link recommended care processes with meaningful clinical outcomes. In the process, DHCS agency partners have prioritized measures that reflect emotional health, behavioral health, and children ages five through sixteen. These factors have led to the development of a number of standard assessment tools. Some of these measures are used internationally, and others are only applicable to the U.S.
One measure that has been studied is the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). This measure is designed to assess high-risk youth for residential treatment and is used to screen psychosocial dysfunction in inner city children. Researchers also studied the effectiveness of a pain assessment tool.
A Children's service interview is a semi-structured questionnaire that was developed to assess barriers to child mental health treatment. It is designed to be administered via telephone. The first section of the
Children's Mental Health questionnaire contains a series of questions that examine parents' beliefs about the services that are available. They are asked to specify the most important barriers to seeking help. Parents most often reported that they did not know what services to access, did not know how to get help, and worried about the consequences of a poor or untreated child. Another barrier that was mentioned was the perception that their child had mental health problems but no one in the system could help them.
One of the more popular standardized measures used to measure the effectiveness of child mental health treatment is the Pediatric Symptom Checklist. This measure is used to screen for psychosocial dysfunction in inner city children, and as a metric of preventive behavioral health care. Using this measure to assess the effectiveness of preventive behavioral health care can help to reduce the risk of developing psychosocial dysfunction.
Several other standardized measures have been studied. Although the SDQ is the most common measure, other measures have been evaluated as well. Other measures include the Pediatric Symptom Checklist, Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, and the Child Behavior Checklist. Each of these was applied to a variety of child mental health conditions. Archived records from clinics illustrate the feasibility of these measures in clinical practice.
Several randomized controlled trials have evaluated the effectiveness of specific types of
Adolescent Care . One trial found that nearly two thirds of referred children with persistent symptoms were not in contact with CAMHS. However, this does not necessarily mean that they did not receive care.
The majority of referred children received care for emotional disorders, and a small percentage were referred for other disorders.Using the SF-36 health survey, researchers have explored the comorbidity of childhood anxiety disorders.Other studies have looked at parental attribution of responsibility and office discipline referrals.There is still much to learn about how to improve the way we treat children with emotional disorders, and these discoveries are a good place to start. If you want to know more about this topic, then click here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Child_and_Adolescent_Mental_Health_Services.