Back to Annual Meeting Page		American Public Health Association 133rd Annual Meeting & Exposition December 10-14, 2005 Philadelphia, PA

Abstract #112342

Huey J. Chen, PhD, Louis de la Parte Florida Mental Health Institute, University of South Florida, 13301 North Bruce B. Downs Blvd, Tampa, FL 33612, 813-974-7409, chen@fmhi.usf.edu and Silvia McShan, MPA, FMHI, University of South Florida, 200 SW. 20th Ave., Ft. Lauderdale, FL 33312.

Purpose: The purpose of the study is to explore how and to what degree the family members are involved in the mental health services received by their children with severe emotional disturbance (SED). Through this understanding will provide directions in developing strategies and plans to develop a system of care that will provide comprehensive, integrated, culturally competent, and individualized service plans to meet the needs of children with SED and their families.

Methods: This is a cross-sectional descriptive study using mail survey to collect information from caregivers of children with SED in the community. Degree of involvement in their children's mental health services was measured by the Family Empowerment Scale (FES) and health/mental health status were obtained by the Child Health Questionnaire subscale (CHQ) and Pediatric Symptom Checklist (PSC). ANOVA and t-tests were used to examine the group differences.

Results: The results indicated that caregivers experienced very different degrees of empowerment in knowledge about the system and engaging in empowerment behaviors among different racial/ethnic groups. And children's emotional and behavioral symptoms were negatively related to their caregivers' level of empowerment at the family level (r2 = .322, p = .00).

Implications: These results suggest that (1) caregivers can be benefited from health education in understanding their children's emotional/behavior problems as wells as in how to deal with common situations that they face on a daily basis; and (2) knowing the service system their children are involved in, especially for children of Hispanic and minority groups.

Learning Objectives:

• 1 Describe the role of caregivers' empowerment and its relationship to their children's health/mental health conditions
• 2. Identify difference in degree of caregivers' involvement in mental health services received by their children among different racial/ethnic groups.

Keywords: Family Involvement, Child and Adolescent Mental Health

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Presenting author's disclosure statement:

I wish to disclose that I have NO financial interests or other relationship with the manufactures of commercial products, suppliers of commercial services or commercial supporters.