From all that UK research has been telling us lately, it seems that as a society we aren’t looking after our children’s emotional and mental health very well.

For three decades, we're told, children's mental well-being has been deteriorating; and more have disorders than was previously realised. [see also: Children's futures and the big screen]

Not surprisingly, much hand-wringing and soul-searching has followed these gloomy pronouncements, blaming everything from food additives to changes in family structure, usually without much evidence. According to some commentators, our society is plain ‘broken’ and requires radical political and cultural mending.

Could the answer be at once more complex and yet, in some essential respects, more straightforward? That is, aren’t there many interacting causes of mental health problems in childhood and adolescence, and couldn’t some of them be addressed, at least partially, through simple interventions?

A handful of new studies offer deeper insights into the nature of the problem and what can be done.

In Norway, a team led by Anette Christine Iversen at the University of Bergen compared the mental health of children in the general population with that of children receiving child welfare and protection services (CWS) – the majority of whom live at home with their biological families.

The study of over 4,000 children aged 10-13 years showed that just over half the 82 child welfare clients had worryingly high scores on the conduct problems and total difficulties sub-scales of the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ). (This compares with a figure of about 40 per cent in two studies in England and Northern Ireland. )

They were were 13.5 times more likely than their peers to have a high score on ‘conduct problems’ and 14 times more likely to have a high score on ‘total difficulties’ (which include conduct problems, hyperactivity, peer problems and emotional symptoms).

The researchers also looked at how many problems children had, finding that 38 per cent of child welfare clients had high scores on three or more SDQ sub-scales (compared with 4% for other children). Such high levels of comorbidity leave no doubt that children’s problems are frequently complex.

Are front-line professionals equipped to deal with these difficulties? The sheer volume of cases involved indicates that they need to be. In England, for example, one in t