Parents of children with disability: Mental health outcomes and utilization of mental health services

Background: Caring for a child with disability may result in stress and difficulties for parents, leading to mental health problems.Objective: This study aims to investigate the prevalence of mental health problems, mental health service utilization, and costs in parents of children with disabilities compared to parents of children without disabilities.Methods: We used data from the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, a nationally representative sample of children recruited in 2004 with biennial follow-up and linkage to out-of-hospital health service use and billing data for the parents. Descriptive analyses were used to present parental mental health measured using the Kessler 6. Generalized linear models were conducted to examine whether being the parent of a child with disability was associated with higher mental health service utilization and costs compared to those without disability.Results: A total of 4935 children and their parents were included in this study. There was a higher prevalence of mental health problems for parents of children with disabilities compared to those without in all child ages. Regression analyses indicated that parents of children aged 12-17 years with disabilities had significantly higher mental health service utilization and costs compared to parents of children without disabilities (biennial cost difference 1/4 $86.37, 95%CI ($15.67-$157.07)). However, these differ-ences were not observed among parents of children aged 4-11 years.Conclusion: There are high levels of mental health concerns among parents of children with disabilities in Australia. Mental health interventions are needed to support parents of children aged 4-11 years where there appear to be unmet health needs.(c) 2023 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/).