Understanding family preferences for accessing mental healthcare for children with chronic physical health problems

Summary This project is a discrete choice experiment - a survey-based method that helps us to understand people's choices or decisions. The context is unmet need for mental healthcare among children with chronic physical health problems attending RCH outpatient clinics.

Project Details

This project is a discrete choice experiment - a survey-based method that helps us to understand people's choices or decisions. The context is unmet need for mental healthcare among children with chronic physical health problems attending RCH outpatient clinics. The aims are: to understand what pathways to mental healthcare would fit best with the preferences of families attending outpatient clinics at RCH; and to identify strategies to achieve optimal uptake of pathways to mental healthcare in this group, and thereby inform efficient resource allocation by RCH to address this unmet service need. Families engaged with outpatient clinics seek or expect mental healthcare from the hospital rather than community-based alternatives and this contributes to the level of perceived and reported unmet need among these children. There are a range of factors that may contribute to this situation, including: the absence of alternatives that are free or bulk billed at the point of care; viewing the hospital as their child's 'usual' place of care; belief that the hospital will provide better quality care than alternatives; or lack of knowledge of alternatives. Addressing each of these requires different actions and resources, so that understanding which are the main drivers of family help-seeking behaviour and unmet need will inform the efficient allocation of resources to this problem.    The work will include literature review and qualitative methods to identify the relevant factors that are important to families' choices and the contexts within which they may seek help for their child's mental health problems. The student will work with the health services group, including health economists and clinicians. It will suit someone interested in qualitative research, mental health, health services research and/or health economics.