Abstract
BackgroundMental health problems are often transmitted from one generation to the next. This knowledge has led to changes in Norwegian legislation, making it mandatory to assess whether or not patients have children, and to provide necessary support for the children of mentally ill patients. The main purpose of this study was to evaluate the process of implementing new routines in adult mental health services to identify and support children of mentally ill parents.MethodsThe design was a pre-test post-test study. The sample (N = 219 at pre-test and N = 185 at post-test) included mental health professionals in the largest hospital in the region, who responded to a web-based survey on the routines of the services, attitudes within the workforce capacity, worker’s knowledge on the impact of parental mental illness on children, knowledge on legislation concerning children of patients, and demographic variables.ResultsThe results of this study indicated that some changes are taking place in clinical practice in terms of increased identification of children. Adult mental health services providing support for the children was however not fully implemented as a new practice.ConclusionThe main finding in this study is that the identification frequency had increased significantly according to self-reported data since the Family Assessment Form was implemented. The increase in self-reported identification behavior is however taking place very slowly. Three years after the legislation was changed to making it mandatory to assess whether or not patients have children, it was still not fully incorporated in the routines of the entire workforce. In terms of support for the families affected by parental mental illness, the changes are not yet significant.
Highlights
Mental health problems are often transmitted from one generation to the
To investigate whether or not the workforce had changed their practice in terms of providing support for the children, we tested for increased experience with family conversations
We evaluated to what degree clinical practice was changing in order to identify and offer patients’ children support
Summary
Mental health problems are often transmitted from one generation to the next. This knowledge has led to changes in Norwegian legislation, making it mandatory to assess whether or not patients have children, and to provide necessary support for the children of mentally ill patients. There are three key determinants related to organizational readiness to change and implementation capability: task demands, resource availability and situational factors [19] Another central issue is whether or not the workforce considers that there is a need for improvement of clinical practice. In a study of therapists’ self-perceptions [21] of their own clinical skills and performance levels, compared to others in their profession, 25% viewed their skill level to be at the 90th percentile when compared with others, and none viewed their skills as below average If this reflects the reality, there would neither be need nor room for improvement among the clinicians regarding identification of and support for children of mentally ill patients, because their current practice is perceived as sufficient
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