The Need for National Data on Epidemiology of Child and Adolescent Mental Disorders

The Need for National Data on Epidemiology of Child and Adolescent Mental Disorders Pratap Sharan, MD, PhD, Rajesh Sagar, MD Address for Correspondence: Professor Pratap Sharan, Department of Psychiatry, All India Institute of Medical Sciences, New Delhi – 110029, Email: [email protected] _________________________________________________________________________________________ It is essential that the nation find ways to support emotional health of children and adolescents and their families through a continuum of comprehensive, individualized, and culturally compatible services. Children below 16 years of age constitute over 40% of India’s population and estimating the prevalence of mental disorders in children and adolescents is critical to providing the mental health services they need. The application of methodological developments like structured and semistructured diagnostic interviews and statistical methods for estimating prevalence and correlates of mental disorders, have established the prevalence of mental disorders, patterns of comorbidity, correlates and risk factors for mental disorders, and service patterns in developed countries. In contrast, Indian studies haven’t as yet definitively established the prevalence of mental disorders in children and adolescents. The wide disparity in the reported prevalence rates of mental disorders in Indian studies on children and adolescents have been attributed to methodological differences like varying modes of case ascertainment, sampling methods, instruments and the informants chosen across the studies, and unspecified clinical criteria for case ascertainment.