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The Role of Stigma in Parental Help-Seeking for Perceived Child Behavior Problems in Urban, Low-Income African American Parents

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Abstract

Significant numbers of children have diagnosable mental health problems, but only a small proportion of them receive appropriate services. Stigma has been associated with help-seeking for adult mental health problems and for Caucasian parents. The current study aims to understand factors, including stigma, associated with African American parents’ help-seeking behavior related to perceived child behavior problems. Participants were a community sample of African American parents and/or legal guardians of children ages 3–8 years recruited from an urban primary care setting (N = 101). Variables included child behavior, stigma (self, friends/family, and public), object of stigma (parent or child), obstacles for engagement, intention to attend parenting classes, and demographics. Self-stigma was the strongest predictor of help-seeking among African American parents. The impact of self-stigma on parents’ ratings of the likelihood of attending parenting classes increased when parents considered a situation in which their child’s behavior was concerning to them. Findings support the need to consider parent stigma in the design of care models to ensure that children receive needed preventative and treatment services for behavioral/mental health problems in African American families.

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Acknowledgments

This research was supported in part by Grant awarded to Drs. Davis and Jones from the Department of Pediatrics Pilot Research Grant Program at the University of Louisville. The authors wish to thank Lesa Ryan for overseeing the data collection and data management and the parents who participated.

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Correspondence to Robert Dempster or Deborah Winders Davis.

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Robert Dempster, Deborah Winders Davis, V. Faye Jones, Adam Keating, and Beth Wildman declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Human and Animal Rights and Informed Consent

All procedures followed were in accordance with the ethical standards of the responsible committee on human experimentation of the University of Louisville whose Institutional Review Board approved the research and with the Helsinki Declaration of 1975, as revised in 2000. Informed consent was obtained from all parents before being included in the study.

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Dempster, R., Davis, D.W., Faye Jones, V. et al. The Role of Stigma in Parental Help-Seeking for Perceived Child Behavior Problems in Urban, Low-Income African American Parents. J Clin Psychol Med Settings 22, 265–278 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10880-015-9433-8

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