Clinical considerations when treating adults who are parents.

Abstract

When providing mental health services to adults, we are often treating individuals who, among their other roles, are also parents. The goal of this article was to provide practitioners with the state of the science about both the impact of parental psychopathology on children and the role that children's well-being has in parental psychopathology. We discuss the benefits of integrated care for adult clients who are parents, as well as the barriers to providing integrated care for both parents and children in psychotherapy, and provide recommendations for practice. With this information, practitioners will gain greater awareness of their opportunities to treat adults in their parenting roles as well as to contribute to prevention of mental disorders in children.

Intergenerational effects of maternal depression and co-occurring antisocial behaviors: The mediating role of parenting-related processes.

“…Although screening for parental mental health in the pediatric setting is not without its challenges, it also represents a real opportunity to dismantle siloed treatment approaches to parent and child mental health and applies a true intergenerational approach to preventing the development of psychopathology. Programs that attend to psychopathology in early childhood should include linked clinical care options that can improve child outcomes by minimizing maternal psychopathology and improving parenting behavior (Handley et al, 2017; Zalewski et al, 2017). Moreover, such parenting interventions should consider the heterogeneity of maternal depression and be multifaceted in nature, addressing several aspects of the parenting environment (e.g., reducing parental stress, improving parental efficacy, and supporting parents to become more sensitive and less negative in interactions with their children; Toth et al, 2006).…”

Is it me or my child? The association between maternal depression and children's behavior problems in mothers and their children with or without autism

“…Findings underscore the need to monitor caregiver mental health in the context of children's behavior problems and consider dyadic relations over time. The siloed nature of most mental health service systems is such that treatment for adults and children are separate: most evidence‐based interventions for adults do not recognize their role as parents and programs to reduce children's behavior problems rarely address parent psychopathology (Zalewski et al, 2017). It is imperative to develop theoretically and empirically informed integrated care programs that treat mental health problems at the level of the family , particularly when mothers are experiencing depression (Goodman & Garber, 2017) and for families with children with ASD (Karst & Hecke, 2012).…”