Child mental illness and the help-seeking process: a qualitative study among parents in a Ugandan community.

Awareness of symptoms closer to normal behaviour must be increased in order to improve the recognition of common mental illnesses in children. Stakeholders should capitalise on the common recognition of the importance of the school when planning the upscaling of and improved access to services. Multifactorial beliefs within the spiritual and biomedical realms about the causes of mental illness lead to multisectoral help-seeking, albeit without collaboration between the various disciplines. The CAMH Policy Guidelines do not address traditional service providers or provide a strategy for better integration of services, which might mean continued fragmentation and ineffective service provision of child mental health care.