The Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) is a widely used child mental health questionnaire with five hypothesised subscales. There is theoretical and preliminary empirical support for combining the SDQ's hypothesised emotional and peer subscales into an "internalizing" subscale and the hypothesised behavioral and hyperactivity…

Objective: To identify prospective predictors of mental health in Kabul, Afghanistan. Method: Using stratified random-sampling in schools, mental health and life events for 11- to 16-year-old students and their caregivers were assessed. In 2007, 1 year after baseline, the retention rate was 64% (n = 115 boys, 119 girls, 234 adults) with no…

Two large surveys of children and adolescents in the general British population is used to evaluate the dimensionality of the total difficulties score of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). The findings support the use of SDQ as a measure of child mental health.

Background: For adult physical and mental health, the population mean predicts the proportion of individuals with "high" scores. This has not previously been investigated for child mental health. It is also unclear how far symptom scores on brief questionnaires provide an unbiased method of comparing children with different individual,…

Background: Previous studies document a mental health advantage in British Indian children, particularly for externalising problems. The causes of this advantage are unknown. Methods: Subjects were 13,836 White children and 361 Indian children aged 5-16 years from the English subsample of the British Child and Adolescent Mental Health Surveys. The…

Background: The use of similar standardised measures of psychopathology for population surveys permits cross-cultural comparisons. However, interpretation of findings can be challenging because rating thresholds may differ across cultures. By combining questionnaire and interview data, we explore whether lower questionnaire scores in Norway as…

Emotional and behavioural difficulties (EBD) are common in children, and forecasting their prevalence in schools is of interest to both academic researchers and local authorities. Percentage of pupils eligible for free school meals is one measure often used for this purpose. The article presents the first independent validation of a simple…

Objective: To identify risk factors for poor child mental health in the southeastern Brazilian municipality of Taubate. Method: In 2001 we carried out a representative school-based survey of Brazilian schoolchildren ages 7 to 14 years (response rate, 83%). We collected extensive data on child mental health and on potential risk and protective…