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Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology
Published in: Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology 4/2017

01-04-2017 | Original Paper

Family structure and childhood mental disorders: new findings from Australia

Authors: Francisco Perales, Sarah E. Johnson, Janeen Baxter, David Lawrence, Stephen R. Zubrick

Published in: Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology | Issue 4/2017

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Abstract

Purpose

Many children now live in non-traditional families—including one-parent, blended, and step families. While a substantial body of international evidence indicates that these children display poorer cognitive and socio-emotional outcomes than children living in traditional families, research on childhood mental disorders is scarce. This report provides new evidence of the relationships between family structure and childhood mental disorders in an under-researched context, Australia.

Methods

We use recent, nationally representative data on children aged 4–17 from Young Minds Matter, the second Australian Child and Adolescent Survey of Mental Health and Well-being (N = 6310). Mental disorders were assessed using the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children—Version IV and included social phobia, separation anxiety disorder, generalised anxiety disorder, obsessive–compulsive disorder, major depressive disorder, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and conduct disorder.

Results

Compared to children living in original families, children in one-parent, blended, and step families experienced a higher prevalence of mental disorders. Amongst children whose parents separated, the time since separation was not statistically significantly related to the prevalence of mental disorders.

Conclusions

Although we are unable to assess causality, our findings highlight the strength of the association between family structure and child and adolescent mental health. They also stress the need for programs to support children, parents, and families in non-traditional family types to reduce mental health inequalities in childhood and later life.
Footnotes
1
We undertook a systematic search for literature on the links between family structure and childhood mental disorders in academic repositories (e.g. Scopus, Web of Knowledge). The search terms we used included permutations of the terms ‘anxiety’, ‘attention deficit’, ‘CBCL’, ‘depression’, ‘depressive symptoms’, ‘Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children’, ‘disorder’, ‘disruptive behaviour’, ‘distress’, ‘hyperactivity’ ‘mental health’, ‘social phobia’ in combination with the terms ‘family structure’, ‘family breakdown’, ‘family instability’, ‘parental separation’, ‘divorce’, and ‘family type’. We searched within the articles’ title, abstract and keywords. The systematic search yielded 186 items. Upon closer inspection, a vast majority of these did not meet the necessary criteria. In most cases, this was because the studies examined broad measures of socio-emotional outcomes, such as the SDQ and the CBCL. Only the 11 papers we cite here were confirmed to assess the links between family structure and childhood mental disorders using diagnostic interviews or equivalent clinical assessments.
 
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Metadata
Title
Family structure and childhood mental disorders: new findings from Australia
Authors
Francisco Perales
Sarah E. Johnson
Janeen Baxter
David Lawrence
Stephen R. Zubrick
Publication date
01-04-2017
Publisher
Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Published in
Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology / Issue 4/2017
Print ISSN: 0933-7954
Electronic ISSN: 1433-9285
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-016-1328-y

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