Description
This Project intends to implement a program to promote mental health in vulnerable population at higher risk of developing psychopathology - children and adolescents of parents with psychiatric disorders. This population also has easy access to our services through their parents who attend our psychiatry community services. The main objective of this project is to improve access to mental health care for children of parents with psychiatric illness who attend the Psychiatry Service of the Hospital Fernando de Fonseca. Expected Outcomes - promote the training of the Psychiatry Service professionals and of the Child psychiatry team in this subject and improve knowledge in other COPMI programs; identify the children of parents who attend our Psychiatry consultations; promote parenting skills in our patients and families and mental health of their children (family and group interventions); strengthen their social integration and access to primary health care; promote early identification of child and adolescents with psychopathology and specialized therapeutic interventions at the earliest time possible. The program’s activities will include training in COPMI interventions and Programs (Knowledge of national programs implemented in Norway, Netherlands and Finland and Training program conducted by partners and consultants), psycho educational family intervention and intervention with support groups for children and adolescents; production of psycho educational material for families and children and a Program Manual; early treatment of psychopathology with multidisciplinary interventions in child and adolescent psychiatry; establishing protocols with community facilities, Primary health care and child protection social services. The program’s target population is children of parents with psychiatric illness who attend the Psychiatry Service at HFF.
Summary of project results
Amadora Municipality and Parishes of Queluz, Belas, Massamá and Casal de Cambra at Sintra Municipality, cover about 400,000 inhabitants, 76.645 less than 19 years old. It’s a heterogeneous population, with quality areas, but marked by serious socio-economic problems, with high population density in Amadora and more dispersed in the municipality of Sintra (where there are also rural areas), high percentage of immigrants, mainly coming from the African Countries with Official Portuguese language. Hospital Fernando Fonseca serves this population that, indeed, is marked by high psychosocial risk areas. The HFF's Psychiatric Department’s mission is to treat mental illness and promoting mental health of these people. The current project has created the opportunity to implement a mental health promotion program in a particularly vulnerable and at greater risk of developing psychopathology - children and adolescents of parents with psychiatric disorder - that are associated with biological risk factors, as well as family and social risk factors. The training of the Psychiatric Department professionals and the implementation of new practices towards the identification of needs and characterization of the psychiatric patients' underage children, also favored the access of this population of children and adolescent. The intervention carried out with these children and adolescents will have a significant impact on what they will be as adults, making them more resilient and promoting their access to general health care, mental health and social support. This project intervened in reducing psychosocial risk factors that mediate the transgenerational transmission of psychopathology, and promoting protective factors at different levels, which are: the child/adolescent, parents with psychiatric illness and their family, professionals of the Psychiatry Department and the social context. This project contributed positively to the reduction of social inequalities in the target area, approaching the answer to this population to the possibilities already available in some other locations in Portugal This project is sustainable because it is based on a structure of intervention fully integrated in the Psychiatry Department, on the training and acquisition of skills by the professionals from the department and on the strengthening of partnerships with community structures, which remain and will continue after the end of the project funding.
Summary of bilateral results
Voksne for Barn organization, beginning to receive the coordinating team in its facilities, made known their working model, provided guidance in our work and also specific training (provided by Dr. Randi Talseth and Dra. Karin Kallsmyr), supported the submission to the Transgenerational Mental Health Congress and participated in the Semente Project final meeting with a conference by Dr. Randi Talseth.