Study of perception and help seeking behaviour among parents for their children with psychiatric disorder: a community based cross-sectional study

Background: Child mental health problems present a health challenge for all societies, which are aggravated by lack of knowledge in parents regarding them as well as suboptimal response to them with reference to the help seeking behaviour by parents of these cases. We tried to find out perception of child mental health problems in parents and also the help seeking behaviour of parents residing in an urban slum of Mumbai because understanding impediments to perceiving these disorders and thereby having optimal health seeking behaviour could greatly contribute to reducing the impact of these problems on children's growth and development overall. Study design & setting: A cross‐sectional study was conducted in urban slum of Mumbai. Materials & Methods: Systematic random sampling technique was used to select 257 respondents which were interviewed for presence of mental health disorder using semi-structured questionnaire. Parents of 38 children who were diagnosed for mental health disorder were interviewed with the help of pre-tested questionnaire for perception and help seeking behaviour for psychiatric disorder in their children. Interviews were conducted after getting informed consent. Two focus group discussions with the parents of the cases about their child’s mental health were also conducted. Results: 47.4% parents perceived the problems in behaviour of their child and of these, only 10.5% parents sought treatment voluntarily before the interview. Major reasons given for not taking treatment were unawareness, no felt need, stigma attached to mental health. Parents’ perception and help seeking behaviour were better for male gender, higher education of parents, employed parents, having 5-10 members’ family and stress-free family. Conclusion: Present study outlined the need of awareness in parents regarding child mental health problems. Parents also need to be addressed in intervention and education programs related to child mental health.