Mental Health of Refugee Children and Youth: Epidemiology, Interventions, and Future Directions

The number of refugee youth worldwide receives international attention and is a top priority in both academic and political agendas. This article adopts a critical eye in summarizing current epidemiological knowledge of refugee youth mental health as well as interventions aimed to prevent or reduce mental health problems among children and adolescents in both high- and low-to-middle-income countries. We highlight current challenges and limitations of extant literature and present potential opportunities and recommendations in refugee child psychiatric epidemiology and mental health services research for moving forward. In light of the mounting xenophobic sentiments we are presently witnessing across societies, we argue that, as a first step, all epidemiological and intervention research should advocate for social justice to guarantee the safety of and respect for the basic human rights of all refugee populations during their journey and resettlement. A constructive dialogue between scholars and policy makers is warranted.

Psychiatric Epidemiology: Concepts and Findings

This chapter provides background on the discipline of epidemiology and its contribution to our understanding of childhood mental disorders. A summary is provided of data on the prevalence and correlates of mental disorders in children and adolescents in community surveys. Anxiety disorders are the most frequent conditions in children, followed by behavior disorders, mood disorders, and substance use disorders. About half of youth with one disorder also meet criteria for a second disorder, demonstrating the pervasive nature of comorbidity even in childhood. Less than half of youth with current mental disorders receive mental health specialty treatment. However, those with the most severe disorders tend to receive mental health services. Current issues that are now being identified in the field of child psychiatric epidemiology includes refinement of classification and assessment; integration of child and adult psychiatric epidemiology; and evaluation of both mental and medical disorders in children.

Epidemiology of mental disorders in children and adolescents

This article provides a review of the magnitude of mental disorders in children and adolescents from recent community surveys across the world. Although there is substantial variation in the results depending upon the methodological characteristics of the studies, the findings converge in demonstrating that approximately one fourth of youth experience a mental disorder during the past year, and about one third across their lifetimes. Anxiety disorders are the most frequent conditions in children, followed by behavior disorders, mood disorders, and substance use disorders. Fewer than half of youth with current mental disorders receive mental health specialty treatment. However, those with the most severe disorders tend to receive mental health services. Current issues that are now being identified in the field of child psychiatric epidemiology include: refinement of classification and assessment, inclusion of young children in epidemiologic surveys, integration of child and adult psychiatric epidemiology, and evaluation of both mental and physical disorders in children.

Child Psychiatric Epidemiology and Canadian Public Policy-Making: The State of the Science and the Art of the Possible

Epidemiological studies have characterized the high burden of suffering that child psychiatric disorders cause—14% of children (1.1 million in Canada) have clinically important disorders at any given time. In this review, we summarize the recent research and discuss several unresolved scientific issues that must be addressed to make epidemiology more useful to policy-makers. We then discuss implications for policy-making to improve children's mental health outcomes. Overall, given the high prevalence rates, increasing clinical services alone will not suffice; rather, a multifaceted mix of strategies is required.

Child Psychiatric Epidemiology: Current Status and Future Prospects

Objective The purpose of this paper is to present selected findings from child psychiatric epidemiology in areas of prevalence and correlates, and discuss issues in interpreting these data and their relevance. Method Selected references were used. Results Prevalence rates of 1 or more child psychiatric disorders in nonclinical community samples of children and adolescents vary between 17.6% and 22%. Issues in interpreting these data include: the boundary between normal and abnormal, boundary between disorders, disagreement among informants, and problems with instrumentation. Knowledge about the correlates of child psychiatric disorders is quite extensive, but information on causal factors is relatively sparse. Conclusions Findings in child psychiatric epidemiology are relevant to clinicians, and future emphasis in the field will be on prospective studies with multiple waves of data from different domains including the child, the family, the school, and the wider community.