In summary, these results provide information regarding how adolescents experience stress
and symptoms, and why their standpoint should be taken into account and compared with
that of their parents. Low to moderate congruencies were reported. Factors including
adolescents’ age, time spent with children, the number of hospitalizations, and level of
disability explained the discrepancies. The results suggest several implications for mental
health care providers. Information concerning how adolescents experience stress from an
adolescent viewpoint displayed a unique perspective about what really bothers adolescents,
thus providing insight into the types of stress management programs adolescents would
likely benefit from the most. Health care providers should be aware that several factors are
associated with the discrepancies between parents’ and adolescents’ reports. Considerations
should include the types of behaviors exhibited by the adolescents, as well as demographic
characteristics. Clinicians may obtain more valid information from parents who spend more
time with children. Clinicians need to be aware of the saliency of the behaviors that they are
asking parents and children to report. Since parents usually initiate seeking mental health
service, rather than adolescents, parents should be informed of how to identify symptoms.
Parents may not notice auditory hallucinations or delusions, and frequent communication
can aid them in detecting otherwise unnoticed symptoms. Parents may be better able to
recognize depression/withdrawal than adolescents with schizophrenia. They need to be
educated, in particular, parents who spend less time with children (e.g. full time worker), in order to detect those symptoms accurately. In spite of low to moderate congruency between
adolescents with schizophrenia and their parents, this study provided a comprehensive view
of adolescents’ stress and symptoms from multiple informants and addressed how to deal
with differences among them.