Children's understanding of mental illness: an exploratory study.
BACKGROUND
This study aimed to investigate children's thinking about mental illness by employing a well-established framework of adult illness understanding.


METHODS
The study adopted a semistructured interview technique and a card selection task to assess children's responses to causes, consequences, timeline and curability of the different types of mental illness. The children were aged between 5 and 11 years.


RESULTS
Results indicated a developmental trend in the children's thinking about mental illness; there was an increase in the children's understanding of the causes, consequences, curability and timeline of mental illness with age. The older children demonstrated a more sophisticated and accurate thinking about mental illness compared with the younger children, who tended to rely on a medical model in order to comprehend novel mental illnesses. Furthermore, the girls exhibited more compassion, showing greater social acceptance compared with the boys.


CONCLUSIONS
The Leventhal model provides a useful framework within which to investigate children's knowledge and understanding of mental illness. Limitations of the study and implications for future research are discussed.
Fox
C
C
Newman College of Higher Education, Birmingham, UK. claudie.fox@newman.ac.uk
Buchanan-Barrow
E
E
Barrett
M
M
D001290:Attitude; D002648:Child; D002675:Child, Preschool; D032882:Comprehension; D005260:Female; D017144:Focus Groups; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D001523:Mental Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D012919:Social Behavior; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires