Marshall Catherine, Semovski Valbona, Stewart Shannon L
University of Western Ontario, 1137 Western Road, London, Ontario, N6G 1G7, Canada.
University of Western Ontario, 1137 Western Road, London, Ontario, N6G 1G7, Canada.
Child Abuse Negl. 2020 Aug;106:104464. doi: 10.1016/j.chiabu.2020.104464. Epub 2020 Jun 1.
Children and youth with a history of maltreatment experience different developmental, psychiatric and health problems. Ensuring there is streamlined access to services is imperative to recovery. Yet, few reports of standardized methods for directing and prioritizing risk for children seeking services exist.
The current study aims to address this gap and explore how mental health personnel triage highly vulnerable cases. Specifically, the goal of the current study is to examine whether experiencing childhood interpersonal trauma predicts service urgency.
Participants were 19,645 children and youth, ages 4-18 years (M = 11.1 SD = 3.4) who completed the interRAI Child and Youth Mental Health Screener (ChYMH-S) at various community-based and residential children's mental health facilities across Ontario.
Retrospective data collected from the ChYMH-S was used to explore differences in maltreatment history, gender, and legal guardianship and their impact on service prioritization.
Children and youth who were exposed to some form of interpersonal trauma were more likely to have mental health issues requiring urgent follow-up service compared to those who were not exposed. Findings also suggested that gender and legal guardianship impact service urgency.
Children and youth who have experienced maltreatment are significantly more likely to score high on mental health service urgency than those who did not. This provides valuable insight that can support the development of appropriate system-level changes to policy and practice when servicing children and youth with mental health needs in Canada.
有虐待史的儿童和青少年会经历不同的发育、精神和健康问题。确保能简化获得服务的流程对康复至关重要。然而，关于为寻求服务的儿童指导风险并确定风险优先级的标准化方法的报告却很少。
本研究旨在填补这一空白，并探索心理健康工作人员如何对高度脆弱的案例进行分类。具体而言，本研究的目标是检验童年人际创伤经历是否能预测服务紧迫性。
参与者为19645名4至18岁的儿童和青少年（M = 11.1，SD = 3.4），他们在安大略省各地的社区和寄宿制儿童心理健康机构完成了儿童青少年综合评估量表（ChYMH-S）。
从儿童青少年综合评估量表收集的回顾性数据用于探索虐待史、性别和法定监护权的差异及其对服务优先级的影响。
与未经历过某种形式人际创伤的儿童和青少年相比，经历过的更有可能出现需要紧急后续服务的心理健康问题。研究结果还表明，性别和法定监护权会影响服务紧迫性。
与未经历过虐待的儿童和青少年相比，经历过虐待的儿童和青少年在心理健康服务紧迫性方面的得分显著更高。这提供了有价值的见解，可支持在为加拿大有心理健康需求的儿童和青少年提供服务时，对政策和实践进行适当的系统层面变革。
