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This page is an AI-assisted Turkish summary of the study presented at the 26th World Congress of Psychiatry. The study belongs to the presenting authors; please refer to the original source when citing it.

SO010

Why interventions for parents of children with mental health problems fail: a synthesis of the evidence and mechanisms

WHY INTERVENTIONS FOR PARENTS OF CHILDREN WITH MENTAL HEALTH DIFFICULTIES FAIL: A SYNTHESIS OF EVIDENCE AND MECHANISMS

Interventions directly targeting the well-being of parents of children diagnosed with anxiety or depression have largely been ineffective because of a mismatch between intervention targets and the mechanisms that maintain parental distress.

The study aimed to examine why interventions for parents of children and young people aged 5 to 18 diagnosed with anxiety or depression have shown limited effectiveness. A systematic review and meta-analysis design was used. Interventions were included if at least one component directly targeted parents’ own well-being, and validated measures of parental mental health, well-being, stress, and caregiver burden were used as outcomes; study quality was assessed using the EPHPP tool, and a random-effects meta-analysis was performed. A total of 15 intervention studies involving 812 parents/caregivers were identified. Mothers made up 68% to 100% of the samples, 12 of the 15 studies included psychoeducation, 7 studies reported post-treatment outcomes, and 3 reported follow-up outcomes. The primary pooled effects did not reach statistical significance in any domain: g=0.11 (95% confidence interval [CI] -0.25 to 0.47) for anxiety, g=0.22 (95% CI -0.08 to 0.52) for depression, g=0.04 (95% CI -0.19 to 0.26) for stress, and g=0.04 (95% CI -0.26 to 0.33) for caregiver burden. A small effect on anxiety emerged only when one influential study was excluded (g=-0.26, 95% CI -0.44 to -0.08; the conference abstract reported p=0.02 for the same analysis); no significant pooled effect was found at follow-up. Individual studies showed scattered signals of proximal change, such as improved decentering (d=-0.88), reduced rumination (d=-0.56), improved treatment beliefs (d=-0.44), and improved parent–adolescent attachment (d=-0.45). The authors emphasize that the studies did not specify which component was expected to change which mechanism, pointing to a problem with intervention logic. In conclusion, null effects do not mean that parents cannot be helped; interventions for parental well-being need to be designed around an explicit program theory and directly target the core psychological and systemic processes that maintain distress.

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