Parents' perception of children's mental health: Seeing the signs but not the problems

Abstract

Background It is a public heath priority to understand why many children with mental health problems fail to access mental health services. This study aims to quantify under-recognition of children's mental health problems by parents across income quintiles. Methods We estimated under-recognition with parent-reported mental health problems and the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) using a nationally representative Australian data set for children aged 4-15 years with 24 269 person-wave observations. Results Under-recognition was the highest in the lowest income quintile, with 11.5% of children from the lowest income quintile families who scored in the clinical range on the SDQ p..