Identifying Mental Health Difficulties in Children Living in Care: Is the SDQ enough?

In this Video Abstract, Dr. Eva A. Sprecher discusses her co-authored JCPP Advances paper ‘Sufficiency of current practice: How well does the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire detect clinically elevated posttraumatic stress, anxiety, and depression symptoms in children in care?’. It is well-established that children living in care are at far greater risk of mental health difficulties than their peers. This includes common and trauma-specific mental health conditions, including depression, anxiety and posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In England, the mental health of children in care is monitored using the caregiver-report Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). Our aim was to understand the sufficiency of current screening practices for children in care. We investigated how sensitive the SDQ was to clinically elevated PTSD, anxiety, and depression symptoms.

Learning Objectives

1. The level of mental health need amongst children living in care in the UK.

2. The sufficiency of the SDQ as a mental health screening tool for PTSD, anxiety, and depression symptomology amongst children living in care in England and Wales.

3. To what extent are there associations between self- and carer-report SDQ total and emotional difficulties scores, and self-report scores on disorder-specific symptom screening tools for PTSD, anxiety and depression.

4. To what extent are children with above-threshold symptoms on disorder-specific self-report screening tools for PTSD, anxiety and depression missed by a reliance on either exclusive use of self- or carer-report SDQ total score or emotional sub-scale thresholds, and which children are more likely to be missed by such cut-offs.

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