Dataset Information

Why do British Indian children have an apparent mental health advantage?

ABSTRACT: Previous studies document a mental health advantage in British Indian children, particularly for externalising problems. The causes of this advantage are unknown.Subjects were 13,836 White children and 361 Indian children aged 5-16 years from the English subsample of the British Child and Adolescent Mental Health Surveys. The primary mental health outcome was the parent Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Mental health was also assessed using the teacher and child SDQs; diagnostic interviews with parents, teachers and children; and multi-informant clinician-rated diagnoses. Multiple child, family, school and area factors were examined as possible mediators or confounders in explaining observed ethnic differences.Indian children had a large advantage for externalising problems and disorders, and little or no difference for internalising problems and disorders. This was observed across all mental health outcomes, including teacher-reported and diagnostic interview measures. Detailed psychometric analyses provided no suggestion of information bias. The Indian advantage for externalising problems was partly mediated by Indian children being more likely to live in two-parent families and less likely to have academic difficulties. Yet after adjusting for these and all other covariates, the unexplained Indian advantage only reduced by about a quarter (from 1.08 to .71 parent SDQ points) and remained highly significant (p < .001). This Indian advantage was largely confined to families of low socio-economic position.The Indian mental health advantage is real and is specific to externalising problems. Family type and academic abilities mediate part of the advantage, but most is not explained by major risk factors. Likewise unexplained is the absence in Indian children of a socio-economic gradient in mental health. Further investigation of the Indian advantage may yield insights into novel ways to promote child mental health and child mental health equity in all ethnic groups.

SUBMITTER: Goodman A

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3428791 | biostudies-literature | 2010 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

Why do British Indian children have an apparent mental health advantage?

Goodman Anna A Patel Vikram V Leon David A DA

Journal of child psychology and psychiatry, and allied disciplines 20100819 10

<h4>Background</h4>Previous studies document a mental health advantage in British Indian children, particularly for externalising problems. The causes of this advantage are unknown.<h4>Methods</h4>Subjects were 13,836 White children and 361 Indian children aged 5-16 years from the English subsample of the British Child and Adolescent Mental Health Surveys. The primary mental health outcome was the parent Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Mental health was also assessed using the te ...[more]

PMID: 20840505

Similar Datasets

Project description:India is revising its mental health legislation with the Indian Mental Healthcare Act 2017 (IMHA). When implemented, this legislation will apply to over 1.25 billion people. In 2005, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a Resource Book (WHO-RB) on mental health, human rights and legislation, including a checklist of 175 specific items to be addressed in mental health legislation or policy in individual countries. Even following the publication of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) (2006), the WHO-RB remains the most comprehensive checklist for mental health legislation available, rooted in UN and WHO documents and providing the most systematic, detailed framework for human rights analysis of mental health legislation. We sought to determine the extent to which the IMHA will bring Indian legislation in line with the WHO-RB.The IMHA and other relevant pieces of Indian legislation are compared to each of the items in the WHO-RB. We classify each item in a binary manner, as either concordant or not, and provide more nuanced detail in the text.The IMHA addresses 96/175 (55.4%) of the WHO-RB standards examined. When other relevant Indian legislation is taken into account, 118/175 (68.0%) of the standards are addressed in Indian law. Important areas of low concordance include the rights of families and carers, competence and guardianship, non-protesting patients and involuntary community treatment. The important legal constructs of advance directives, supported decision-making and nominated representatives are articulated in the Indian legislation and explored in this paper.In theory, the IMHA is a highly progressive piece of legislation, especially when compared to legislation in other jurisdictions subject to similar analysis. Along with the Indian Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act 2016, it will bring Indian law closely in line with the WHO-RB. Vague, opaque language is however, used in certain contentious areas; this may represent arrangement-focused rather than realisation-focused legislation, and lead to inadvertent limitation of certain rights. Finally, the WHO-RB checklist is an extremely useful tool for this kind of analysis; we recommend it is updated to reflect the CRPD and other relevant developments.

Project description:BackgroundImmigrants typically arrive in good health. This health benefit can decline as immigrants adopt behaviours similar to native-born populations. Risk of injury is low in immigrants but it is not known whether this changes with increasing time since migration. We sought to examine the association between duration of residence in Canada and risk of unintentional injury.MethodsPopulation-based cross-sectional study of children and youth 0 to 24 years in Ontario, Canada (2011-2012), using linked health and administrative databases. The main exposure was duration of Canadian residence (recent: 0-5 years, intermediate: 6-10 years, long-term: >10 years). The main outcome measure was unintentional injuries. Cause-specific injury risk by duration of residence was also evaluated. Poisson regression models estimated rate ratios (RR) for injuries.Results999951 immigrants were included with 24.2% recent and 26.4% intermediate immigrants. The annual crude injury rates per 100000 immigrants were 6831 emergency department visits, 151 hospitalizations, and 4 deaths. In adjusted models, recent immigrants had the lowest risk of injury and risk increased over time (RR 0.79; 95% CI 0.77, 0.81 recent immigrants, RR 0.90; 95% CI 0.88, 0.92 intermediate immigrants, versus long-term immigrants). Factors associated with injury included young age (0-4 years, RR 1.30; 95% CI 1.26, 1.34), male sex (RR 1.52; 95% CI 1.49, 1.55), and high income (RR 0.93; 95% CI 0.89, 0.96 quintile 1 versus 5). Longer duration of residence was associated with a higher risk of unintentional injuries for most causes except hot object/scald burns, machinery-related injuries, non-motor vehicle bicycle and pedestrian injuries. The risk of these latter injuries did not change significantly with increasing duration of residence in Canada. Risk of drowning was highest in recent immigrants.ConclusionsRisk of all-cause and most cause-specific unintentional injuries in immigrants rises with increasing time since migration. This indicates the need to develop strategies for maintaining the immigrant health advantage over time while balancing the desire to support integration, active living, and healthy child development.

Project description:BackgroundThe COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of mental wellbeing. The identification and implementation of quality measures can improve health outcomes and patient experience. The objective was to identify and define a core set of valid and relevant pediatric mental health quality measures that will support health system evaluation and quality improvement in British Columbia, Canada.MethodsThe study consisted of four phases. First, a comprehensive database search identified valid pediatric quality measures focused on mental health and substance use (MH/SU). Second, the identified quality measures were mapped to focus areas, which were then prioritized by two stakeholder groups consisting of 26 members. Third, up to two representative measures for each prioritized focus area were pre-selected by an expert panel (n = 9). And fourth, a three-step modified Delphi approach was employed to (1) assess each quality measure on a 7-point Likert scale against three relevance criteria (representative of a quality problem, value to intended audience and actionable), (2) discuss the results, and (3) select and rank the most relevant measures. Forty-eight stakeholders were invited to participate; of those 24 completed the round 1 survey, 21 participated in the round 2 discussion and 18 voted in the round 3 selection and ranking survey. For round 1, consensus was determined when at least 70% of the response rates were within the range of five to seven. For round 3, Kendall's coefficient of concordance W was used as an estimator of inter-rater reliability.ResultsOne-hundred pediatric mental health quality measures were identified in the database search. Of those, 37 were mapped to ten focus areas. Pre-selection resulted in 19 representative measures moving forward to the Delphi study. Eleven measures met the consensus thresholds and were brought forward to the round 2 discussion. Round 3 ranking showed moderate to strong raters' agreement (Kendall's W = 0.595; p < 0.01) and resulted in the following five highest-ranked measures: level of satisfaction after discharge from inpatient admission due to MH/SU, number of patients experiencing seclusion or restraint, length of time from eating disorder referral to assessment, number of ED visits due to MH/SU, and number of readmissions to ED.ConclusionThe selected core set of valid and relevant pediatric quality measures will support sustainable system change in British Columbia. The five top-ranked measures will be refined and tested for data collection feasibility before being implemented in the province.

Dataset Information

Why do British Indian children have an apparent mental health advantage?

Publications

Why do British Indian children have an apparent mental health advantage?

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets