Poster #171 - Treating Parent-Child Dyads: Identifying Interventions That Improve Parenting and Psychopathology in Parents and Children

• In Event: 2-163 - Poster Session 08
  In Poster Session: PS 08 Section - Prevention and Interventions

Integrative Statement

The link between parental psychopathology and increased risk of child psychopathology is well established (McLaughlin et al., 2012), as is the influential role of maladaptive parenting in the development of a variety of child mental health disorders (Rapee, 1997; Wood et al., 2003; Moroney et al., 2017), and parents with psychopathology may be especially prone to parenting deficiencies (Zalewski et al., 2017). While less often examined, the other direction of influence is also important when considering the links between psychopathology in parents, parenting quality, and psychopathology in children. For example, stress associated with parenting a child with psychopathology (Barroso et al., 2017) may increase mental health symptomatology in parents via the bidirectional effects of parent-child relations (Sameroff & MacKenzie, 2003), and child maladjustment may elicit poorer parenting (Scaramella & Leve, 2004).

From a clinical perspective, this transactional model between the domains of parental psychopathology, parenting and child mental health highlights the importance of developing and disseminating treatments which improve all three. Currently, clinical interventions typically focus on one or two of these domains (Zalewski et al., 2017). The rare instances in which all three are targeted focus on postpartum treatment of mothers and infants (Van Doesum et al., 2008). There is a timely opportunity to examine the extent to which these domains have been integrated in treatments for parents and older children.

To this end, a systematic review of RCT’s of psychotherapeutic interventions which reported pre and post-intervention outcomes for parental psychopathology, child psychopathology and parenting behavior was conducted to identify treatments which may influence all three domains. The review has three aims: 1) to characterize who these interventions were designed for, especially in regards to diagnostic profiles of parents and children and the degree of additional family risk factors; 2) to determine which interventions yielded significant improvements in each of the three domains; and 3) to describe the structure and targets of the interventions, focusing on the extent to which interventions therapeutically integrate domains.

A search of PsycNet and PubMed yielded 4,961 records. An additional 184 records were retrieved from previous reviews on related topics. Only RCTs which tested a psychotherapeutic intervention for parents and/or children over 1 year old and reported outcomes for all three domains were included. Studies focused on developmental disorders other than ADHD were excluded.

Following analysis of 106 papers included in the review, results related to the three aims are discussed, with special focus placed on the interventions’ content: the targeted mechanisms of change, the intervention components, and the degree to which they synergize the cultivation of parenting skills with the treatment and/or prevention of parents’ and children’s mental health disorders.

This review aims to inform clinical researchers and intervention developers with regards to which treatments are best suited to improving three crucial outcomes for families dealing with parental and/or child psychopathology, and to further inform the standard of care for children or parents so that treatment of one member of the dyad may take the mental health of the other member into consideration.

Authors

• Yoel Everett, University of Oregon
  Presenting Author

• Rebecca Daigle, University of Oregon
  Non-Presenting Author

• Maureen Zalewski, University of Oregon
  Non-Presenting Author