The purpose of this quantitative study was to examine the interaction between parents’ own trauma and their assessment of their child’s functioning and its relationship to the parent’s belief that their child would benefit from mental health care services. The parents’ trauma experience was measured using the Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) questionnaire and Trauma History Questionnaire (THQ), and the child’s functioning was measured using the Columbia Impairment Scale (CIS). It was hypothesized that the higher number of traumas a parent experienced was associated with a weaker relationship between a parent’s assessment of their child’s functional impairment and the likelihood a parent recognizes the benefit of mental health care services for their child. One hundred and eighty-four people participated in this study. Data were analyzed using multiple binary logistic regression, and no significant relationship was found between a parent’s assessment of their child’s functional impairment and that parent’s belief that their child would benefit from mental healthcare services. The parent’s childhood THQ score and age were found to have significant positive relationships with the parent’s belief that their child would benefit from mental healthcare services. The variable found to have the most significant positive relationship with the parent’s belief that their child would benefit from mental healthcare services was an educational or healthcare professional telling the parent that the child would benefit from mental health care services. Clinical implications, limitations, and future directions for research were addressed.

Ce mémoire de maîtrise vise à comprendre comment la question de l'accessibilité aux soins de santé mentale se pose dans l'univers des jeunes adultes en difficulté. Plus précisément, le but de l'étude est de documenter les barrières à l'accès aux soins de santé mentale, d'analyser les logiques sous-jacentes à ces barrières et finalement d'évaluer l'impact de l'expérience d'être jeune adulte en difficulté sur celles-ci. L'approche de l'anthropologie médicale et le concept de souffrance sociale, sensibles aux facteurs culturels, socio-économiques et politiques, servent de contexte d'analyse aux 12 entretiens semi-dirigés réalisés auprès de jeunes adultes fréquentant des Auberges du cœur à Montréal. L'identification de barrières à l'accès a, dans un premier temps, permis d'observer que les obstacles dans l'expérience de recours aux soins de santé mentale peuvent provenir autant des institutions que des jeunes adultes eux-mêmes. Dans un deuxième temps, l'analyse qualitative a servi à dégager trois principales logiques qui sous-tendent ces barrières : le parti pris positiviste, la logique marchande, et la tendance à la psychologisation. Les données récoltées tendent à montrer que des influences politiques et économiques sont déterminantes dans le maintien de différents types de barrières à l'accès et qu'une pleine reconnaissance de ces enjeux profonds est essentielle pour agir positivement sur l'accessibilité aux soins de santé mentale de la population en général, et plus particulièrement des jeunes adultes en difficulté dont les besoins se font criants. / This Master's thesis aims to understand how the issue of access to mental health care arises in the world of young adults in difficulty. More precisely, the research's objectives are to document the barriers to access to mental health care, to analyze tendencies underlying these barriers and to evaluate the impact of being young adult in trouble on them. The approach of medical anthropology and the concept of social suffering, sensitive to cultural, socio-economic and political factors framed the analysis to the 12 semi-directed interviews conducted with young adults using services from Auberges du coeur to Montreal. First, the identification of barriers to access allowed to observe the obstacles in the experience of use of mental health care may come as institutions that young adults themselves. Secondly, the qualitative data analysis was used to identify three main logic underlying these barriers: the positivist bias, market logic, and the trend of psychologizing. The data collected suggest that political and economic influences are critical in maintaining different barriers to access, and full recognition of these deep issues is essential to act positively on access to mental health care of the general population, especially young adults in difficulty whose needs are urgent.