The difference in parental leave (care of children) between parents who have children with mental health issues and those who do not increases with the child's age.
Among six-year-olds with mental health issues, 60 percent of parents have taken parental leave in the year after the first contact with healthcare, compared to 56 percent in other cases. The corresponding figure for children who are eleven years old is 53 percent respectively 39 percent.
At the same time, parents of children with mental health issues are also on sick leave to a greater extent, especially in cases of psychiatric diagnoses.
“We cannot answer what the connection is due to. It could be that the child's illness causes anxiety and less opportunity for recovery in parents, or due to heritability and social vulnerability,” says Anna Persson, analyst at the Swedish Social Insurance Agency, in a press release.
Mental health is defined in the report as at least one healthcare visit within psychiatry or specialized outpatient care, or 24-hour care where the child has received a psychiatric diagnosis, or if the child has collected psychotropic medication. The concept is used for both mental illnesses and neuropsychiatric functional impairments (NPF).
