Bridging the gap between child mental health need and professional service utilisation: Examining the influence of mothers’ parental attributions on professional help-seeking intentions

There is a significant gap between the need for child mental health services and use of these services by families. Parental attributions may play a role in this. This study examined whether mothers’ attributions about their child’s problems influence professional help-seeking intentions in a general sample of community mothers. Secondary analysis re-examined this hypothesis in a subgroup of mothers of children with clinically elevated mental health symptoms. Cross-sectional survey data were collected from mothers (N = 184) of children aged between 2 and 12 years recruited from the community. Mothers completed self-report questionnaires measuring parental attributions: child-responsible attributions and parental self-efficacy; professional help-seeking intentions; and psychosocial covariates: child mental health, mothers’ anxiety and depression, child age, gender, marital status, education, and professional help-seeking experience. Hierarchical regression modelling indicated that parental attributions explained professional help-seeking intentions after controlling for covariates in both the general sample (ΔF = 6.07; p = .003) and subgroup analysis (ΔF = 10.22, p = .000). Professional help-seeking intentions were positively associated with child-responsible attributions (β = .19, p = .002) but not parental self-efficacy (β = – .01, p = .865) in the general sample, while positively associated with child-responsible attributions (β = .20, p = .009) and negatively associated with parental self-efficacy (β = – .16, p = .034) in the subgroup analysis. Findings were independent of the presence of clinically elevated symptoms, problem type, and severity. Overall, the findings support models suggesting that parental attributions have a role in professional help-seeking for child mental health problems.

Parental Competence Beliefs and Attributions for Achievement in Kindergarten: Effects on Parent Expectations

The aim of this study was to examine (a) parental attributions for children’s performance in language, mathematics and globally school in kindergarten, (b) whether parents’ perceptions concerning their children’s academic ability predict the children’s school performance in kindergarten, the subsequent parental attributions, and the impact of school performance and parental attributions on parental expectations concerning their children’s later school performance in the first primary school year, and (c) the role of the three sets of concepts (perceived academic ability, performance in kindergarten, and subsequent parent attributions) in the formulation of parent expectations. The participants were parents of 150 kindergarten children (80 girls, 70 boys), who were randomly recruited from 45 state kindergartens of various towns of Greece. The results revealed: (a) parents attributed their children’s good performance to stable and, mainly, internal and personal controllable to the children’s factors, (b) the higher parents estimated their children’s ability, the better the children performed in the respective school subject, and the higher the parental attributions to internal, stable, personal controllable and external uncontrollable to the children’s factors were, (c) variability in the effect of parents’ perceptions of their children’s ability on attributions and performance between and within school subjects, in favoring language, and least favoring general school performance and (d) although parental perceived children’s academic ability was the most powerful predictor of parents’ expectations regarding their children’s performance in grade one, both the children’s past performance and the subsequent parental attributions accounted for a positive significant portion of the variance of it.

How Do Mothers’ Parental Attributions Affect Child Outcomes from a Positive Parenting Intervention? A Mediation Study

Problematic parental attributions refer to negative causal explanations for child problem behaviour and are known to predict parenting intervention outcomes. This study examines alternative accounts of how mothers’ problematic parental attributions, operationalised as negative pre-treatment and change resistant parental attributions during treatment, may affect child behaviour outcomes from a parenting intervention program. Putative mediators included parental feelings about the child and use of harsh discipline. Participants were 163 families with children aged from 3 to 16 referred to specialist clinics for the treatment of conduct problems. Measures were collected as part of pre-treatment, post-treatment, and 3-month follow-up assessments. Mothers’ pre-treatment and change resistant parental attributions were associated with smaller improvements in parental feelings at the end of treatment which in turn were associated with greater use of harsh discipline. Greater use of harsh discipline was associated with greater conduct problems overall. Smaller improvements in parental feelings mediated the effects of pre-treatment and change resistant parental attributions on outcomes in mothers’ use of harsh discipline and mediated the effects of change resistant parental attributions on outcomes in child conduct problems. Smaller improvements in parental feelings about the child may act as a mechanism that explains the impact of problematic parental attributions on treatment outcomes.

Are Negative Parental Attributions Predicted by Situational Stress?: From a Theoretical Assumption Toward an Experimental Answer

In an experimental within-subjects research design, we studied the theoretical assumption that stress predicts negative parental attributions, which until now was mainly studied using cross-sectional study designs. During home visits to 105 families, mothers and fathers were subjected to two experimental conditions and two control conditions. In the experimental conditions, parents completed the Parental Attributions of Child behavior Task (PACT, a computerized attribution task) under two different stressful conditions (i.e., cognitive load and white noise); in the control conditions, the PACT was completed without additional stressors. Furthermore, parents completed questionnaires about existing risk factors (i.e., partner-related stress, parenting stress, and abuse risk). There were no main effects of induced stress on attributions for fathers and mothers, but we found that a combination of induced situational stress (cognitive load) and high risk resulted in the most negative parental attributions in mothers. The discussion focuses on intensity and origin of stressors, comparison between mother and father attributions, implications for interventions, and possible future research directions.