Occurrence and determinants of parental psychosocial stress and mental health disorders in parents and their children in early childhood: rationale, objectives, and design of the population-based SKKIPPI cohort study

Abstract

Purpose The postnatal period is a vulnerable time for parents and children but epidemiological and health care utilisation data for Germany on parental mental health during early childhood is scarce. This protocol describes the rationale, aim and study design of a population-based cohort study to assess the occurrence and determinants of psychosocial stress and mental health disorders, as well as the use and cost of health care and social services in early childhood. Methods As part of the collaborative SKKIPPI project, we will contact a random sample of 30,000 infants listed in the residents’ registration offices of three German towns and we expect to include 6,000 mother–child pairs. Both parents are invited to fill out an online screening questionnaire. Mothers with indications of psychosocial stress will be interviewed to assess mental health disorders, regulatory problems of their children, as well as health care and social services utilisation, with a follow-up assessment after 6 months. Results After description of sociodemographic and health data, we will analyse occurrences, patterns, and potential determinants (maternal age, social status, household factors, migration status etc.) of psychosocial stress and mental health disorders in the mothers and their children in early childhood. Conclusions Our study will identify potential risk and protective factors for postnatal mental health and health care utilization of psychosocially burdened families. This will help to improve prevention and treatment strategies to strengthen the parent–child relationship, to reduce persisting vulnerability of children, and to improve health care and social services. Trial registration The study has been registered in the German Clinical Trial Registry on February 8th 2019 (DRKS-ID: DRKS00016653).

Online Screening Tool for Detection of Psychosocial Stress and Mental Health Disorders in Parents and Their Children in Early Childhood: Results from the SKKIPPI Cohort Study

“…Parents of nearly 18% of the children drawn from the residents' registration offices in Berlin, Leipzig, and Flensburg participated in the first step of the study. During preparation of the study a response rate of 20% was estimated [24] and the response rate achieved (17.5%) was only slightly below and corresponds to response rates from other epidemiological studies in Germany in previous years [35,36]. Nearly 99% of the consented participants also finished the questionnaire, so completeness of the data is very high.…”

“…After inclusion in the study, we screened for parents with an elevated mental health risk and collected relevant characteristics using a screening online questionnaire (supplementary material 1). Participants with an elevated mental health risk were invited for further assessments, details on these further assessments and the entire study were described previously [24]. The analysis presented in this paper contains only data collected with the above named screening online questionnaire.…”

“…The SKKIPPI cohort study was established to assess the occurrence and determinants of psychosocial stress and mental health disorders in parents and their offspring in early childhood [24]. The study is part of a multi-component project with randomised intervention as well as qualitative studies [25][26][27], funded by the German health care innovation fund to improve integrated and innovative care in Germany [28].…”

Recent Psychological Changes in Egogram for University Students by Tokyo University Egogram (TEG)

“…For decades, mental health for people has been placed more importance associate with various social relationship [11]. Growing environment also influences much for younger generation and teenagers [12]. Furthermore, the development of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) may give a large impact for current situation [13].…”

Being an Infant in a Pandemic: Influences of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Infants, Toddlers and Their Mothers in a Clinical Population

“…This study is part of the multicenter research project Evaluation of Parent-Infant Psychotherapy: epidemiologic cohort study and intervention studies (SKKIPPI; [34,36,37]) as part of a RCT, which evaluated the integrated psychological psychiatric care for families with children from 0-36 months. The overall project consists of a cohort study [36] and two randomized-controlled intervention trials (for further information see [34,37]), funded by the German Health Care Innovation Fund. Written informed consent was obtained from all participants and their legal guardians to participate in the RCT and use of their data in research related to the questions of the RCTs in anonymized form.…”