International Union for Circumpolar Health Ministry of Public Health and Social Development of RF Russian Academy of Medical Sciences Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Medical Sciences Siberian Branch of Russian Academy of Sciences Medical Polar Fund “Science” The Northern Forum

Abstracts

Child health. Women`s health

The previous cross-sectional study with the stratified randomised sample using using internationally recognised standardised measures and diagnostic systems showed that prevalence of psychiatric disorder in Siberian children is around 15–20% that is roughly twice as common as in developed countries and more common than in the developing countries. Though differing in rate, child psychiatric disorders in Siberia are similar to those in other countries in terms of type: emotional and behavioural disorders are the two most common categories and hyperactivity the third with the prevalence rates of 8.8%, 8.6% and 1.3% respectively. The findings also indicate that although the most significant risk factors in Siberia were the same characteristics of the children and their immediate family environment as in other countries, the effect of socioeconomic measures in Siberia was smaller. The aim of the present study was to explore the effect of more proximal factors of family life style along with traditional SES measures in predicting Siberian child mental health problems. In two large samples of 1013 adolescent self-reports and parent reports of 1640 children aged from 3 through 18 years the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) was used to assess emotional symptoms, conduct problems, hyperactivity, peer problems and prosocial behaviour as well as total difficulties and their impact on everyday life. The mental health measures were similar to those obtained on larger and representative samples. The SDQ second-order structure confirmed two major groupings of difficulties – internalising, comprising of emotional symptoms and peer problems, and externalising, comprising of conduct problems and hyperactivity. The contribution of psychosocial factors was explored via the structural equation modeling. In the adolescent sample on the whole they accounted for 9.6% of variance in internalizing scores and for 34.6% in externalising scores. Family violence, harsh parenting, female gender and stepfather in the family were significant predictors of emotional problems, while famile affluece and older rage contributed to the lower level of problems. Risk factors for behavioural problems were substance use, harsh parenting and stepfather in the family, while family cohesion, adolescent’s older age and safety of the neighbourhood contributed to the lower level of problems.

Note. Abstracts are published in author's edition

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Last update: 06-Jul-2012 (11:52:05)