The impact of childhood conditions and concurrent morbidities on child health and well-being
Data(s) |
05/06/2008
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Resumo |
Background. Understanding the impact of illnesses and morbidities experienced by children and adolescents is essential to clinical and population health programme decision making and intervention research. This study sought to: (1) examine the population prevalence of physical and mental health conditions for children and quantify their impact on multiple dimensions of children's health and well-being; and (2) examine the cumulative effect of concurrent conditions.<br /><br />Methods. We conducted a cross-sectional school-based epidemiological study of 5414 children and adolescents aged 5–18 years, and examined parental reports of child health and well-being using the parent-report Child Health Questionnaire (CHQ) PF50 13 scales are scored on a 0–100 pt scale with clinically meaningful differences of five points and the presence of childhood conditions (illnesses and health problems).<br /><br />Results. Asthma, dental, vision and allergies are the most commonly identified health problems for children and adolescents, followed by attention- and behaviour-related problems (asthma 17.9–23.2%, dental 11.9–22.7%, vision 7.2–14.7%, chronic allergies 8.8–13.9%, attention problems 5.1–13.8% and behaviour problems 5.7–12.0%). As the number of concurrent health problems increase, overall health and well-being decreases substantively with mean differences in CHQ scale scores of 14 points (−7.69 to −21.51) for physical health conditions, and 28 points (−5.15 to −33.81) for mental health conditions.<br /><br />Conclusions. Children's health and well-being decreases linearly with increasing presence and frequency of health problems. Having three or more conditions concurrently significantly burdens children's health and well-being, particularly for family-related CHQ domains, with a greater burden experienced for mental health conditions than physical health conditions.<br /> |
Identificador | |
Idioma(s) |
eng |
Publicador |
Wiley-Blackwell |
Relação |
http://dro.deakin.edu.au/eserv/DU:30017969/nicolas-theimpactofchildhood-2008.pdf http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1365-2214.2008.00825.x |
Direitos |
2008, Blackwell Publishing Ltd |
Palavras-Chave | #children and adolescents #health conditions #multiple morbidities #quality of life |
Tipo |
Journal Article |