Parental reports of emotional and behavioural difficulties on the SDQ for school-age children with vertically acquired HIV infection living in London

Abstract

This study uses a screening questionnaire (the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, SDQ) to indicate levels of parental or carer concern about behavioural or emotional difficulties in a representative group of school-age children with vertically acquired HIV attending London clinics. Fourteen per cent of the total 107 children screened were reported to have behavioural and emotional difficulties scoring in the "abnormal" range. Older children tended to have higher scores. Overall, levels of reported difficulties were found to be similar to those reported for other chronic childhood illnesses and slightly higher than in the general child population.

Coping and psychological adjustment in adolescents with vertically acquired HIV

“…The age finding is consistent with that of Bachanas et al (2001) who found younger children had more externalizing behavior problems than older children (although age in their sample ranged between 6 and 16). Our findings were inconsistent with Melvin et al's (2007) who found older children were reported with higher scores on this measure. Again their sample was younger than the current sample (age range was between 5 and 16).…”

“…This was not the case. The inconsistent findings between Melvin et al's (2007) study and ours (despite the similar ethnicity and clinic context) may be related to the difference in informants (carer vs. self-report). Although inter-informant reliability has been reported to be high for the SDQ (Goodman, Meltzer, & Bailey, 2003;Muris, Meesters, & Van den Berg, 2003) significant discrepancies between different informants have been reported elsewhere (Bachanas et al, 2001;Madden, Hastings, & V'ant Hoff, 2002).…”

“…This measure has been shown to be reliable in a large sample of children and adolescents (Goodman, 2001). It has also been used in a study of carer reports about vertically acquired HIV positive children in the UK (Melvin et al, 2007). Only the Total Difficulties Score (SDQ Total) was analyzed in this study.…”

“…There is some evidence that levels of difficulties are higher than in healthy children (e.g., New, Lee, & Elliot, 2007). In the UK, Melvin et al (2007) studied 107 children with vertically acquired HIV (aged 5Á16 years) of predominantly sub-Saharan African origins. About 14% were reported by their carers to be in the abnormal range as measured with the Strength and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ; Goodman, 1997).…”

Quality of life and psychosocial functioning of HIV infected children

“…Psychosocial dysfunction and behavior problems have been identified in HIV positive school aged children in varying percentages, ranging from as high as 80.7% to 14%. 18,23 But there have been some contradictory reports which state that psychological adjustment scores were not significantly different in the HIV and demographically matched healthy control groups. 24 In some instances, HIV infected children were reported to have been experiencing low levels of depressive and anxious affect and they generally felt positively about themselves.…”