title: Determinants of parents' experiences with outpatient child and adolescent mental health services.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Few studies have investigated how demographic, clinical and organizational characteristics influence parents' experiences with child and adolescent mental health services (CAMHS). The objective of this study was to determine the effects of these characteristics on parents' experiences using data from a large national postal survey.
  
  
  METHODS
  A questionnaire was mailed to 17,871 parents or other primary caregivers whose children were attending 1 of the 86 outpatient CAMHS in Norway in 2006. Multiple regression analysis was used to explore the associations between demographic, clinical and organizational characteristics, and three scales of parents' experiences.
  
  
  RESULTS
  The questionnaire was completed by 7906 parents (46%). Organizational characteristics such as involvement of the parents in treatment and accessibility to the clinic explained most of the variation in all three scales of parents' experiences. Although the effects of demographic and clinical characteristics of the children in some instances were statistically significant, they only accounted for a small amount of the total explained variance.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Accessibility to the clinic and involvement of the parents in treatment are much stronger predictors of parental experiences with outpatient CAMHS than are demographic and clinical variables. Accessibility and involvement are at least partly influenced by the clinics themselves, and hence parental satisfaction may be enhanced by making the clinics more accessible and by involving the parents/caregivers in the treatment.
authors.affiliation: Norwegian Knowledge Centre for the Health Services, P,O, Box 7004 St Olavs plass, 0130 Oslo, Norway. olh@nokc.no.
authors.forename: Olaf
authors.initials: O
authors.lastname: Holmboe
authors.forename: Hilde H
authors.initials: HH
authors.lastname: Iversen
authors.forename: Ketil
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Hanssen-Bauer