Child health and especially mental health are influenced by the education and social level of parents. Health and education systems need to take these aspects into account to develop strategies and protect children, especially those in the most disadvantaged classes.
This is an assessment that could be applied in clinical practice, and has been obtained from 'Social inequalities in mental health and health-related quality of life in children in Spain', published in Pediatrics, and reviewed by María Paz González Rodríguez and Cristina Velarde Mayol. The main conclusion of this study is that 'the family social level and the mother's education level influence the mental health of Spanish children and adolescents', being worse in the most disadvantaged social classes and in the children of mothers with primary education. No association was found with HRQL (a quality of life questionnaire), although disadvantaged social class children have lower scores.
In the measurement of results, the following independent variables were taken into account: age, sex, place of residence, place of birth, family structure (single parent, parental, size) and family socioeconomic level. This was measured taking into account social class and family education level. Finally, they added the “discrimination” factor by sex, ethnicity, religion or social class.
The objective of the investigation was analyze mental health and quality of life in children and adolescents, relating them to the social and family situation. Children from four to 15 years old were included - for mental health - and from 8 to 15 - for quality of life -; from a sample of the Spanish population (more than 30,000 addresses).
The quality of life is a broad and multidimensional concept that includes the subjective assessment of the positive and negative aspects of life. Like mental health, it is related to socioeconomic factors
In situations of social, economic and poverty conflict, population health worsens. These situations mainly affect the weakest, such as children and the elderly.
Since the study was conducted during the years 2006/07, it may be that today (having worsened the situation of many families) they were different.
