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Children's understanding of mental illness: an exploratory study
Author(s) -
Fox C.,
BuchananBarrow E.,
Barrett M.
Publication year - 2008
Publication title -
child: care, health and development
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.832
H-Index - 82
eISSN - 1365-2214
pISSN - 0305-1862
DOI - 10.1111/j.1365-2214.2007.00783.x
Subject(s) - timeline , mental illness , psychology , exploratory research , mental health , clinical psychology , psychiatry , developmental psychology , medicine , anthropology , archaeology , sociology , history
Background This study aimed to investigate children's thinking about mental illness by employing a well‐established framework of adult illness understanding. Methods The study adopted a semistructured interview technique and a card selection task to assess children's responses to causes, consequences, timeline and curability of the different types of mental illness. The children were aged between 5 and 11 years. Results Results indicated a developmental trend in the children's thinking about mental illness; there was an increase in the children's understanding of the causes, consequences, curability and timeline of mental illness with age. The older children demonstrated a more sophisticated and accurate thinking about mental illness compared with the younger children, who tended to rely on a medical model in order to comprehend novel mental illnesses. Furthermore, the girls exhibited more compassion, showing greater social acceptance compared with the boys. Conclusions The Leventhal model provides a useful framework within which to investigate children's knowledge and understanding of mental illness. Limitations of the study and implications for future research are discussed.