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What is the likely impact on child mental health?
The December edition of the Archives carried two complementary papers1,2 on need and demand for, and impact of, parenting programmes, reflecting increasing professional and political interest in interventions to improve parenting. This interest is fuelled by the apparent increase in the prevalence of child mental health problems and greater awareness of the long term impact of childhood conduct disorders.3 Interest in and enthusiasm for parenting programmes, however, should not divert from the critical question—what is the likely impact of parenting programmes on the mental health of the child population in this and other similar countries?
THE PARENTING AND CHILD MENTAL HEALTH CONTINUUM
Parenting and child mental health problems are not “all or nothing” phenomena. They represent a continuum along which arbitrary cut off points are used to define “normality” and “abnormality”. This fundamental characteristic, shared with many other socially and culturally related child health problems, helps to explain the difficulties of defining “good enough” parenting4 and the point at which childhood behaviour becomes abnormal. Although often treated as characteristics of individual families or children, they are embedded in societies and cultures and are powerfully influenced by social, economic, and political contexts.4 Recent work on the 1958 British births cohort5 confirms previous work showing close links between educational …