Family support programs and adolescent mental health: review of evidence

Abstract

Family support programs aim to improve parent wellbeing and parenting as well as adolescent mental and behavioral health by addressing the needs of parents of adolescents experiencing or at risk for mental health problems. Family support programs can be part of the treatment for adolescents diagnosed with mental or behavioral health problems, or family support programs can be delivered as prevention programs designed to prevent the onset or escalation of mental or behavioral health problems. This review discusses the rationale for family support programs and describes the range of services provided by family support programs. The primary focus of the review is on evaluating the effectiveness of family support programs as treatments or prevention efforts delivered by clinicians or peers. Two main themes emerged from the review. First, family support programs that included more forms of support evidenced higher levels of effectiveness than family support programs that provided fewer forms of support. Discussion of this theme focuses on individual differences in client needs and program adaptions that may facilitate meeting diverse needs. Second, family support prevention programs appear to be most effective when serving individuals more in need of mental and behavioral health services. Discussion of this theme focuses on the intensity versus breadth of the services provided in prevention programs. More rigorous evaluations of family support programs are needed, especially for peer-delivered family support treatments.

The role of community sports clubs in adolescent mental health: the perspectives of adolescent males’ parents

“…As argued by Mendenhall and Frauenholtz (2015), mental health literacy interventions should be tailored to the mental health literacy levels of participants to have maximum impact. Past research demonstrates that utilising a multilevel prevention approach with parents, as opposed to a universal one size fits all approach, would improve intervention reach, impact and effectiveness (Kuhn and Laird 2014). Our findings suggest that this approach should take into account parents' past mental health experiences, the unique parentadolescent relationship, current levels of mental health literacy, perceived barriers to participation and preferences for information content and delivery.…”

“…Interventions for adolescent mental health disorders that have demonstrated effectiveness in a family context include family support programs (Kuhn and Laird 2014) and parent-focused programs (Sanders 2002). To date, researchers have not investigated parental views on the potential role of sport clubs in adolescent mental health prevention.…”

Evaluation of MyTeen – a SMS-based mobile intervention for parents of adolescents: a randomised controlled trial protocol

“…Despite the limitations, demand for mental health services far exceeds the current services offered [ 7 , 46 ], and new approaches are therefore needed to enhance access to support parents of adolescents. MHealth interventions targeting parents of adolescents remains largely untapped, but these programmes may comprise a promising approach to preventing and mitigating adolescent mental health problems by widening reach, increasing population level impact, and reduce inequalities due to lack of access to existing services.…”

Adolescents’ perspectives on environmental and individual factors influencing their health behaviours

“…A considerable body of evidence exists supporting the importance of the environment at home or school to students' lifestyles and development. The nature of a person's family situation has been shown to be a strong predictor of an individual's health and health behaviours such as eating habits (de Wit, 2015), physical activity (McMinn et al, 2013), childhood obesity (Appelhans et al, 2014;Berge et al, 2015), mental health (Kuhn and Laird, 2014), and academic achievement (Porumbu and Necsoi, 2013). Additionally, the potential for the school environment to in uence student's knowledge, attitudes skills (Cheung et al, 2017) and, health outcomes (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2013;Choudhry et al, 2011) is also widely recognized.…”