There are many evidence-based interventions to prevent or treat youth anxiety and depression, but not all youth respond to available interventions. In a comprehensive review for Harvard Review of Psychiatry, Tracy Gladstone, Ph.D., senior research scientist, and her colleagues identified a pattern suggesting that youth are less responsive to anxiety and depression interventions when their parents are also experiencing significant depressive symptoms. This is concerning because more than half of all parents with adolescents in treatment for depression have current mood disorders themselves.
Gladstone and her colleagues discuss the importance of future research on this issue, writing, “understanding this connection would enable researchers to tailor interventions, and possibly to address parental depressive symptoms, in order to improve intervention response in youth.”
The article, “The Association Between Parental Depression and Child Psychosocial Intervention Outcomes: Directions for Future Research,” will be available in July 2019.
