Improving care for families where children and parents have concurrent mental health problems

When mental illness affects children and parents within the same family there is a need for close professional collaboration between the respective psychiatric teams. However, there is no nationally established precedence for this, and the area has not been investigated within the published literature.

Retrospective case note study of 322 child psychiatric patients to estimate the prevalence of parental mental illness and analyse the degree of professional liaison taking place.

Twenty-eight children had parents with concurrent mental health problems. Only four of these cases (14.2%) contained evidence of ongoing professional liaison between child and adult mental health teams.

Inadequate liaison between child and adult services is a problem within the UK mental health system and detrimental to patient care. Recent national interest in establishing a more integrated family-focused service is encouraging, but will take time to implement and will not replace the need for separate specialist services. Efficient clinical collaboration must be developed at local levels to create a more comprehensive management strategy for children and parents with concurrent mental health problems.