[Relation between the parents' mental health and the mental health of children in an urban population of Salvador-Bahia].

An epidemiological study of the correlation between parent's mental status and children's psychological health was completed in a representative sample of 1516 adults and 829 children, living in a low-income area of the City of Salvador, Bahia-Brazil. Trained interviewers applied a family questionnaire (20 items on demographic and socio-economic information) and screening symptom scales to all the families (493) in the sample. The survey employed the QMPA (Adult Psychiatric Morbidity Questionnaire) and the QMPI (Child Psychiatric Morbidity Questionnaire), as instruments developed and tested especially for studies in that sociocultural setting. A second step of the survey consisted of a psychiatric examination of all suspected cases, thus allowing for an assessment of validity and reliability of both questionnaires, that showed high sensitivity, specificity and adequate overall misclassification rates. A multiple regression analysis was performed on selected variables. Results showed that mother's scores, family size and child's age are the only variables that reach significance levels to enter the regression model. Father's score showed no isolated effect on children's mental health variation even in interaction with other covariates. However, all the fitted equation explain only 16 per cent of the total regression on the dependent variable.