Barn med psykisk syke foreldre: Behov for nye rutiner og bedre implemen­terings­strategier

Abstract

According to new Norwegian laws, mental health care for adults are obligated to assess all patients who are parents and to act on their children’s needs. This article outlines results from earlier publications in an ongoing study; a research project designed to evaluate the process of changes in clinical practice due to the implementation of new interventions for children of patients in a large General Psychiatric Clinic for adults. There are two groups of participants in this ongoing research project: (1) mental health workers in the clinic (N = 219), and (2) patients who are parents receiving treatment in the clinic (N = 5268‒5705). In the evaluation of clinical practice we used a pretest, posttest and 1-year follow-up design. A significantly higher number of mental health care workers reported that they identified whether or not patients had children at post-measures compared to baseline measures; however, data from patient journals does not reflect such changes. Mental health workers reported that the conditions needed to change clinical practice regarding the children of the patients were still not in place in the workplace.