This article presents an experimental evaluation of the Family Bereavement Program (FBP), a 2-component group intervention for parentally bereaved children ages 8-16. The program involved separate groups for caregivers, adolescents, and children, which were designed to change potentially modifiable risk and protective factors for bereaved children. The evaluation involved random assignment of 156 families (244 children and adolescents) to the FBP or a self-study condition. Families participated in assessments at pretest, posttest, and 11-month follow-up. Results indicated that the FBP led to improved parenting, coping, and caregiver mental health and to reductions in stressful events at posttest. At follow-up, the FBP led to reduced internalizing and externalizing problems, but only for girls and those who had higher problem scores at baseline.

This study is a longitudinal exploration of relations between parents' and children's provision of narrative structure in joint retellings of the past and children's developing personal narrative skills. Fifteen White, middle-class families participated when children were 40 and 70 months old. At both ages, mothers and fathers talked separately with children about shared past events and uniformed experimenters elicited children's personal narratives. Whereas mothers and fathers did not differ in how they structured past narratives, children narrated differently with fathers than with mothers. Further, even at 40 months, girls' narratives were more contexted and evaluative than boys, but parents' provision of narrative structure increased similarly with daughters and sons over time. Children's early abilities to provide evaluative narratives was a strong predictor of their later abilities to provide evaluative narratives; maternal emphasis on evaluations also predicted children's later narrative structure. Parental and child influences on personal narrative skill development are discussed.

In adolescents of divorced parents, the mother program and the mother plus child program reduced symptoms of mental disorder; rates of diagnoses of mental disorder; levels of externalizing problems; marijuana, alcohol, and other drug use; and number of sexual partners.

Objective-Client satisfaction with mental health services is used commonly as an indicator of the quality of care, but there is minimal research on the construct of client satisfaction in youth services, and the extent to which satisfaction is related to improvements in clinical functioning versus other determinants. We examined the relationship between parent and youth satisfaction with youth services, and tested for significant determinants of satisfaction across three major domains: (1) change in youth clinical functioning; (2) youth/family service entry characteristics; (3) treatment/ therapist characteristics.Method-The participants were 143 youths receiving community-based out-patient care. Youths and parents were interviewed at service entry and six months later using well-established measures of clinical functioning and service satisfaction.Results-Youths and parents reported generally high satisfaction, but the correlation between them was low. Despite testing for many potential predictors of satisfaction, very few significant effects were found. In regression analyses of significant predictors of satisfaction, higher youth satisfaction was significantly associated with Caucasian ethnicity and more positive youth expectations about treatment. Higher parent satisfaction was associated with lower caregiver strain at service entry, increased number of sessions, and improvement in youth-reported functional impairment.

This study investigated a positive parenting composite of multiple measures of warmth and consistent discipline as a mediator of the relations between surviving parents' psychological distress and parentally bereaved children's mental health problems using both cross-sectional and prospective longitudinal models. The study included 214 bereaved children ages 7 to 16 and their surviving parent or current caregiver. A multirater, multimethod measurement model of positive parenting was developed. Although the mediational model was supported by analysis of the cross-sectional data, it was not supported in the 3-wave longitudinal model. However, the longitudinal model did find a significant path from positive parenting at Wave 2 to child mental health problems 11 months later at Wave 3, controlling for stability in child mental health problems. Implications for understanding the development of mental health problems of parentally bereaved children are discussed.