Quality of Life and Mental Health in Children and Adolescents

Measuring and monitoring Quality of Life in children and youths continues to increase in importance to both researchers and decision makers. Only a limited number of well validated instruments that measure Quality of Life in children exists, and in Norway only few has been translated into Norwegian. Up to date there are no studies investigating the quality of Life in Norwegian child and adolescent psychiatric patients in a longitudinal perspective, compared to the normal population.

Two generic Quality of Life instruments (KINDL, Bullinger & Ravens-Sieberer 2000 and the ILC, Matejatt & Remschmidt 1998) are introduced in Norway by this study in addition to the use of other well established measures like the "Child behaviour Check List" (Achenbach et al. 2001), etc.

Comparisons: 400 patients and their parents in a child psychiatric outpatient clinic 2000 pupils from the normal population in the middle of Norway Repeated measures after 6 months in both groups. In addition a follow up study for the clinical group 3 years after referral started in june 2006.

Inclusion criteria

• All children 9-16 years of age, attending the 4th, 6th, 8th or 10th grades at public or private schools with at least 50 pupils, in the period from the 1st of September 2004 until 15th of July 2005 in the county of Sør-Trøndelag. Subjects and parents have to give their informed consent.
• All patients 8-10 years of age consecutively referred to to the child psychiatric outpatient clinic in the period from the 1st of June 2003 until 31st of December 2005, having a minimum of two direct contacts with the clinical staff. Patients and parents have to give their informed consent.
• Follow up: Three years after the patients met at the outpatient clinic for the first time.

Exclusion criteria

• Pupils lacking sufficient competence in the Norwegian language, due to foreign background or having a mental developmental level of more than two grades under the respective grade.
• Patients with psychosis or serious mental retardation.