News, Advice, and Tips for Parenting Teenagers

Children of parents who have depression and/or anxiety disorders are at high risk for such problems, too. However, two new studies found that therapy could break the generational cycle.

Dr. Judy Garber of Vanderbilt University studied 316 teenagers whose parents had depression in the past or who were currently depressed.

• Half went into weekly group therapy with others their age and the other group had only usual care.
• Almost a third of the group that had usual care developed depression, while only 21 percent of the other group became depressed.
• However, the success rate of the program depended partly on whether the parents were depressed when the interventions began.
• If the parents were actively depressed, the teens were more likely to become depressed during the study period.

"Were we surprised? No. There is evidence in the literature that kids don't respond as well to treatment if the parent is depressed," said Dr. Garber, whose study appeared in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

For the second study, researchers from Johns Hopkins Children's Center studied 40 children whose parents had anxiety disorders.

• The children in the study were between the ages of seven and 12.
• These parents attended therapy to recognize when they were being overly anxious or overly protective toward their children.
• After one year, none of the children developed anxiety disorders -- but 30 percent in a control group did.

The Johns Hopkins study appeared in the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology.

Labels: depression, parents, research, anxiety

Posted By: Aspen/CRC