Mental health in children: deciding what's best, together

Does making decisions in partnership with children and their parents improve child mental health?
1 in 10 children aged 5 to 16 suffer from a mental health disorder. But, troublingly, it's estimated that 70% of these young people have not had the appropriate interventions at a sufficiently early age.
But how do we decide what 'appropriate' services should look like? This is a key focus for the mental health researchers of CPRU.
Key Points:
- We explored whether shared decision-making improved mental health for children
- Higher levels of child and parent shared decision-making were associated with a greater improvement in mental health
- However, this was only the case if both the parent and the child were involved in decisions, and not when it was just the child
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This case study is for the Mental Health theme.