Author
Summary
Mental health problems in children can affect their overall well-being in both the immediate and longer-term. The Children’s Well-being 2015 publication includes a new measure of children’s mental ill-health. This is in response to feedback from stakeholders who identified mental health as missing from the initial set of measures for children. The new measure uses the total difficulties score from the child self-completion aspect of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) from the UK Household Longitudinal Survey (Understanding Society). This article provides an in-depth look at why mental health is an important aspect of children’s well-being, outlines the reasons why the SDQ was chosen and looks at what the data tells us about the prevalence of mental ill-health and how it relates to other factors, such as bullying and family relationships.