Call to Action: Screening and Addressing Caregiver Mental Health Needs within all Pediatric Medical Subspecialty Settings as Standard of Care

Objective: The objective of this topical review is to provide rationale for the development of standards of care to address the mental health needs of caregivers of youth with chronic and acute conditions.

Methods: In this topical review, we describe the relationship between pediatric medical conditions and caregiver mental health, the state of available screening and intervention options, standards of care in medicine, existing caregiver mental health standards in pediatric subspecialty populations, and exemplar caregiver mental health programs that were developed in response to standards. Finally, we will describe our rationale for this standard of care, provide a call to action, and describe anticipated challenges in developing and implementing such standards. The content of this topical review was guided by expert knowledge, literature review, and communication with members of the American Psychological Association (APA) Division 54 through listserv communication. This review did not involve human subjects research and thus did not require IRB approval, informed consent, or assent.

Results: Standards of Care to address caregiver mental health in pediatrics is one approach to reduce gaps between caregivers' needs and access to treatment. Standards that address caregiver mental health exist for a subset of pediatric medical subspecialty populations but are non-existent across most pediatric populations.

Conclusions: Multidisciplinary collaboration, with broad stakeholder input, could result in the writing of Standards of Care to lead to program development that addresses mental health for caregivers of children with a range of chronic and acute conditions.