Table 1.

Reasons for exclusion of entities with full-text analyses (organised according to the hierarchy that was applied during the exclusion process)

Reason for exclusion	Frequency
Only published as an abstract (of an oral presentation), poster or thesis	37
Intervention studies with no baseline data	1
Data already published in another included article	3
Mental disorder diagnosis not confirmed (not verified by a health professional/diagnostic instrument)	23
Included mental disorders are very heterogeneous (e.g., any mental disorder)	20
Mental disorder with an underlying physical disorder	1
No generic/multidimensional QOL-measure targeting parents (including QOL-measures for children that include a family impact scale)	17
Parents represent less than 80% of participants (criteria does not apply if results are presented separately for parents)	1
No comparison between parents of children with mental disorders v. parents of healthy children/norm values	32
No basic descriptive data (means, s.d., group sizes) available regarding the QOL of parents of mentally-ill children and for parents of healthy controls/norm values	6
Others	4