Evaluation of Psychological Intervention for Parents of Adolescents

Summary

Adolescence is a challenging period for young people and their parents. Changes during adolescence bring increases in social, psychological and behavioural problems (such as gang membership and drug abuse), and most long-lasting mental health problems start during this period. One of the strongest predictors of adolescent outcomes is the quality of parenting they receive at this stage. Parents often struggle with parenting adolescents, leading to feelings of stress and incompetence which, when reaching clinical levels, result in physical and mental health difficulties for parents and their children. This puts significant strain on community, social and mental health services. While the effectiveness of programmes to support parents of adolescents is certain, most are group-based and struggle to retain participants, especially amongst those who need help most: clinically stressed, and single parents. There are no standard care pathways for these parents, which leads to chronic problems and high long-term cost. The present study aims to measure the effectiveness of the Open Door's Approach to Parenting Teenagers (APT) - a manualised, six-session individual parenting intervention focusing on the relationship between parent and adolescent. This brief intervention, developed with awareness of the organisational realities and overarching aims of the National Health Service (NHS), has shown good results amongst clinically stressed parents in a pilot trial. The next phase in evaluating this approach is ruling out spontaneous recovery, by randomly assigning participants to APT or a waiting list control and comparing their results after the intervention, and again after 3 months. If successful, this study will have a major impact on communities around the United Kingdom (UK) - offering an evidence-based, non-proprietary intervention that can be easily disseminated.

Conditions

• Parent-Child Relations

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

The Open Door Approach to Parenting Teenagers (APT)

APT works on a one-to-one or couple basis. It offers 6 weekly 50-minute appointments with an optional 7th review session. The practitioners delivering the intervention have qualifications in psychology, or significant experience of working with adolescent populations, and have undertaken training and supervision in the model. Its aim is to help the parent manage the parenting of their teenager more effectively and establish a more balanced relationship by eliciting their views, feelings, and understanding of their teenager and their relationship, discussing their parental identity and role, carefully examining communication, responses, and information giving, and supporting appropriate boundary making. This is achieved through a collaborative development of strategies, psychoeducation and behavioural experiments.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Open Door Young People's Service

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Alex Desiatnikov · Open Door Young People's Consultation Service

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

DOUBLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2018-12-12

Primary Completion

2019-12-31

Completion

2019-12-31

Countries

• United Kingdom

Study Locations