Mothers Seeking Mental Health Care for Their Children: a Qualitative Analysis of Pathways to Care
Year: 2009
Type: article
Abstract: Approximately 20% of youth meet criteria for a psychiatric disorder. Despite the availability of effective community-based psychosocial treatments, nearly 80% of youth with a psychiatric disorder do not receive treatment. In the United States, parents (typically mothers) are primarily responsible for accessing mental health services for their child. Consequently, researchers have suggested that one of the most promising ways to close the gap between unmet need and service use for youth is to improve our understanding parental help-seeking. However, our understanding of parental help-seeking has been limited by the dominance of atheoretical studies that focus on the characteristics of help-seekers, problem-types, and service locations, that are useful in establishing public health policy but have limited application to front line service delivery. Consequently, almost no research has examined the process that mothers go through - the how and why - to seek mental health services for their children.This dissertation sought to describe and characterize the perceptions and experiences of mothers who accessed mental health services for their child. This study is a qualitative secondary analysis of a random selection of 60 of 127 interviews gathered from mothers 3 months after accessing mental health services. Grounded theory analysis was used to code the interviews and identify themes and patterns. The analysis suggested that mothers went through four stages of help-seeking: 1) recognizing a problem: mothers became concerned about their child's behaviors and then tried to identify the cause of the behaviors; 2) responding to the problem: mothers identified six coping strategies they used to try and resolve their child's problem(s). 3) using mental health services (MHS): mothers identified the type and modality of treatment they received, their mode of entry into services, and their reasons for seeking services; 4) evaluating services: mothers determined if the pathway had terminated, deviated, or changed. The current research suggests that existing models of help-seeking have utility in understanding the experience of mothers seeking mental health services for their child. A four-stage model was identified: 1) recognizing a problem; 2) responding to the problem; 3) using mental health services; and 4) evaluating services. Implications for research and practice are discussed.
Author: Jonathan B. Singer
Language: English
Subfield: Psychiatry and Mental health
Field: Medicine
Domain: Health Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W1486233204