Parental Perceptions of Barriers to Mental Health Care: A Comparison of Parents of Children with and without Traumatic Experiences

With our cross-sectional online survey, we aim to investigate whether parents of children with traumatic experiences differ in their reported barriers to seeking or taking up professional mental health care for their children compared to parents of children without traumatic experiences. We test for differences between the strength of approval of ten barriers (e.g., long distances to therapy sessions).

As we are interested in parents that have only searched for support but whose children have never received mental health care as well as in parents whose children have received mental health care, we include both groups, but first test for possible group differences. In case of group differences, we will perform the planned analysis separately for parents of children who have and those who have not yet received mental health care.

本研究采用横断面线上调查，旨在探究有创伤经历儿童的家长与无创伤经历儿童的家长相比，在为子女寻求或接受专业心理健康照护时所报告的阻碍因素方面是否存在差异。我们将针对10项阻碍因素（如治疗就诊路途遥远）的认可强度差异进行检验。

鉴于我们同时关注两类家长群体：仅寻求过支持但子女从未接受心理健康照护的家长，以及子女已接受心理健康照护的家长，因此将两类群体均纳入研究范畴。但我们首先会检验群体间是否存在潜在差异，若存在群体差异，则将分别针对已为子女接受过心理健康照护的家长与尚未接受过的家长开展预设分析。