Tijdschr Psychiatr. 2025;67(9):504-509.
ABSTRACT
BACKGROUND: Parents’ and children’s mental health problems can be associated. Family-focused care is of importance for meeting the needs of families in which both parents and children experience mental health problems.
AIM: To learn about existing initiatives for family-focused mental health care for children and adults, and to identify their facilitators and barriers.
METHOD: Via the nl-ggz (Dutch Mental Health Care) Association and LinkedIn, mental health professionals were asked to complete a questionnaire about family-focused care for parents and children. Professionals (N = 41) answered questions about collaboration initiatives within and between organisations for child and adolescent mental health and for adult mental health. Their answers were analysed and categorised using thematic analysis.
RESULTS: The majority of participants indicated that family-focused collaboration occurred in the form of family interventions and ‘child or parent checks’. Important barriers for more intensive family-focused collaboration were funding problems and bureaucracy, while a family-focused view during treatment and in the approach of the organisation were important facilitators. Barriers and facilitators mentioned by services in which structural collaboration took place, did not seem to differ from those mentioned for other services in which no or little collaboration took place.
CONCLUSION: In the majority of the services, the health care system still mostly focuses on individuals, albeit with initiatives to improve collaboration. This does not seem to be due to lack of knowledge of barriers and facilitators for successful family-focused care but due to a lack of implementing that knowledge in a sustainable way. A transformation seems to be required in which family-focused care is not only available for families with certain (serious) problems but for all families in order to decide what care would be suitable.
PMID:41288563
