Quebec Child Mental Health Survey: Prevalence of DSM-III-R Mental Health Disorders

Abstract

The Quebec Child Mental Health Survey (QCMHS) was conducted in 1992 on a representative sample of 2400 children and adolescents aged 6 to 14 years from throughout Quebec. Prevalences of nine Axis-I DSM-III-R (American Psychiatric Association, 1987) mental health disorders were calculated based on each informant (for 6-11-year-olds: child, parent, and teacher; for 12-14-year-olds: child and parent). Informant parallelism allows the classification of results of the demographic variables associated with disorders in the logistic regression models. This strategy applies to group variables (correlates of disorders) whereas informant agreement applies to individual diagnoses. Informant parallelism implies that results for two informants or more are in the same direction and significant. In the QCMHS, informant parallelism exists for disruptive disorders, i.e. in two ADHD regression models (child and parent) higher rates among boys and young children, and in three oppositional/conduct disorders regression models (child, parent, and teacher) higher rates among boys. No informant parallelism is observed in the logistic regression models for internalizing disorders, i.e. the patterns of association of demographic variables with anxiety and depressive disorders vary across informants. Urban-rural residence does not emerge as a significant variable in any of the logistic regression models. The overall 6-month prevalences reach 19.9% according to the parent and 15.8% according to the child. The implications of the results for policy makers and clinicians are discussed.

Variations in prevalence of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder worldwide

“…In Spain, prevalence rates 14.4%, 5.3% and 3.0% were reported for three separate samples of children aged 8, 11 and 15 years, respectively [26]. Similar findings were reported in Canada, with prevalence rates of 5.5%, 4.0%, and 2.5% for children aged 6-8, 9-11, and 12-14 years, respectively [10], and in the USA, with prevalence rates 18.2%, 15.9% and 14.8% for children aged 3-5, 5-12 and 12-18 years, respectively [40].…”

“…Higher prevalence rates have been associated with lower socioeconomic status [23,27,33,42,51] and among urban as compared to rural residence [6], but no significant differences were observed regarding the place of residence in other studies [10,14,32,40,49]. Prevalence variations between different racial and ethnic groups have not been adequately examined.…”

“…Magnusson et al reported ADHD prevalence in Icelandic schoolchildren at the level of 4.7% when parents were asked, but 5.8% when teachers were asked [36]. Breton et al demonstrated prevalence rates of 3.3%, 5.0% and 8.9% when children, parents or teachers were asked, respectively [10]. Gomez et al reported rates of 8.8% and 9.9% when parents and teachers were asked, respectively.…”

“…Out of the 39 studies, only 10 [10,20,25,33,35,36,42,45,49,53] were based on information from two settings and reported prevalence rates from 2.2 to 16.1%. Four of these studies [10,33,35,53] used DSM-III-R criteria and the remaining six [20,25,36,42,45,49] Definition of the disorder Modifications in the Diagnostic and Statistic Manual (DSM) of Psychiatric Disorders definition seemingly resulted in changes in the prevalence's rate of ADHD [6]. As already shown, ADHD prevalence was higher with DSM-IV criteria than with DSM-III-R, probably due to recognition of the disorder subtypes.…”

Prevalence of child and adolescent psychiatric disorders in Santiago, Chile: a community epidemiological study

“…Caveats in these earlier studies included problems with sampling, case definitions, data analysis, and presentation [14]. Since 1990, impairment criteria have been included in prevalence studies such as the Quebec Child Mental Health Survey (using DISC and both parents and teachers as informants) [15] and the Great Smoky Mountains Study [16] (using the Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Assessment, or CAPA, interview and the Children's Global Assessment Scale, or C-GAS, as a measure of impairment) [17]. Three reviews of studies done in the past four decades found prevalence rates of 5-22% for psychiatric disorders among children and adolescents [7,11,14].…”