Mental health problems are the leading health problems that Canadian children currently face after infancy. At any given time, 14% of children aged 4 to 17 years (over 800 000 in Canada) experience mental disorders that cause significant distress and impairment at home, at school, and in the community. Fewer than 25% of these children receive specialized treatment services. Without effective prevention or treatment, childhood problems often lead to distress and impairment throughout adulthood, with significant costs for society. Children's mental health has not received the public policy attention that is warranted by recent epidemiologic data. To address the neglect of children's mental health, a new national strategy is urgently needed. Here, we review the research evidence and suggest the following 4 public policy goals: promote healthy development for all children, prevent mental disorders to reduce the number of children affected, treat mental disorders more effectively to reduce distress and impairment, and monitor outcomes to ensure the effective and efficient use of public resources. Taken together, these goals constitute a public health strategy to improve the mental health of Canadian children.

Epidemiological studies have characterized the high burden of suffering that child psychiatric disorders cause--14% of children (1.1 million in Canada) have clinically important disorders at any given time. In this review, we summarize the recent research and discuss several unresolved scientific issues that must be addressed to make epidemiology more useful to policy-makers. We then discuss implications for policy-making to improve children's mental health outcomes. Overall, given the high prevalence rates, increasing clinical services alone will not suffice; rather, a multifaceted mix of strategies is required.

Ethnic identity, achievement, and psychological adjustment were examined among 95 youth from immigrant Chinese families in Canada (mean age 12 years). Utilizing cross-sectional data, promotive effects of ethnic identity were observed; higher ethnic identity was associated with above average achievement and self-esteem and below average levels of depressive symptoms. Vulnerability effects of ethnic identity were fewer; lower ethnic identity was associated with above average depressive symptoms and, for males only, below average self-esteem. Findings also suggested that higher ethnic identity might buffer the stress of poor achievement, indicating a possible protective effect of ethnic identity. Although requiring replication, these preliminary findings illustrate the utility of adopting a risk and resilience framework and suggest the value of promoting strong ethnic identities.

Language brokering, whereby children of immigrants provide informal translation and interpretation for others, is considered commonplace. However, the research evidence remains inconsistent concerning how language brokering relates to the psychological health of child language brokers and their relationships with their parents. Furthermore, few studies have examined the familial context as an explanation source. This study evaluated the moderating effects of adolescents' support of family obligation values and their perceptions of parental psychological control on relationships between language brokering frequency and both adolescent psychological health and parent-child relationship quality. Adolescents from 182 immigrant Chinese families residing in Canada (average age 15 years, 52% females) reported the frequency with which they translated or interpreted various materials for their parents. More frequent language brokering was associated with poorer psychological health for adolescents who held strong family obligation values or who perceived parents as highly psychologically controlling. More frequent language brokering was also associated with more parent-child conflict. Contrary to some past findings, language brokering frequency was not significantly positively associated with self-esteem or with parent-child congruence (i.e., levels of understanding and satisfaction with parent-child relationships). The findings are discussed in relation to their support for theories of parent-child role reversals or independent-interdependent scripts in language brokering.

This article reviews qualitative and quantitative studies related to the academic achievement of youth from immigrant Chinese families. Overall, the literature suggests that Chinese Canadian students demonstrate high levels of achievement and that this academic success is associated with factors such as stronger feelings of ethnic identity, better English language skills in the family, Chinese cultural values, parental emphasis on schooling, and access to social networks that support achievement. Barriers to high achievement are created by stress in the home, experiences of peer discrimination, cultural differences in school-related expectations, and obstacles to parental involvement in schooling. Importantly, despite high average levels of achievement, the reviewed literature also highlights the psychological and social struggles that many Chinese youth experience. High achievement for some Chinese Canadian adolescents comes at a cost of other aspects of their well-being. In particular, intense parental expectations for these youth, as well as the extremely high standard set by the "model minority" stereotype of Chinese youth, contribute to students' psychological distress and alienation from parents and peers. Furthermore, the almost exclusive attention to high achievement among Chinese youth ignores those Chinese youth who are not high achievers. Implications are discussed for educational policy and practice related to the schooling of Chinese Canadian youth specifically, as well as youth from families with diverse ethnic backgrounds more generally. RésuméCe papier présente des études qualitatives et quantitatives liées aux accomplissements académiques des jeunes de familles immigrantes chinoises. Globalement, il est suggéré dans la littérature que les étudiants canadiens d'origine chinoise démontrent un haut niveau de réussite et que ce succès académique est associé à des facteurs tels qu'un ressentiment d'identité ethnique plus fort, un niveau d'anglais supérieur au sein de la famille, des valeurs culturelles chinoises, un intérêt des parents pour la réussite scolaire et l'accès à un réseau social qui supporte la réussite en milieu scolaire. Des barrières à la réussite sont crées par le stress dans les foyers, les expériences de discrimination, les variations dans les attentes scolaires liées aux différences culturelles et les obstacles à l'implication des parents dans la scolarité. Plus important encore, malgré les hauts niveaux de réussite, la littérature met en évidence les troubles sociaux et psychologiques rencontrés par de nombreux jeunes chinois au cours de leur expérience. Pour certains adolescents chinois, ce haut niveau de réussite se paye aux prix d'autres aspects de leur bien-être. En particulier, de hautes attentes de la part des parents, ainsi que des standards placés extrêmement haut dus au stéréotype du "minorité modèle" des jeunes chinois, contribuent à la détresse psychologique des étudiants et à l'aliénation des parents et des pairs. Par ailleurs, cette attention, presque exclusivement con...