Parental Involvement in Adolescent Psychological Interventions: A Meta-analysis

Abstract

Psychological interventions for adolescents have shown mixed efficacy, and including parents in interventions may be an important avenue to improve treatment outcomes. Evidence from meta-analyses examining the role of parents in interventions for youth is inconsistent and has typically combined findings for both children and adolescents together. No prior meta-analysis has examined the specific role of parents in adolescent interventions as compared with interventions focused solely on adolescents across several disorders. To address this gap, systematic literature reviews were conducted utilizing a combination of searches among keywords including (parent * OR family) AND (intervention OR therap * OR treatment OR prevent*) AND (adolescen*). Inclusion criteria were (1) a randomized controlled trial of an individual psychological intervention compared to the same intervention with a parental component, and (2) adolescents must have at least current symptoms or risk to be included. Literature searches identified 20 trials (N = 1251). Summary statistics suggested that interventions involving parents in treatment have a significantly greater impact on adolescent psychopathology when compared to interventions that targeted adolescents alone (g = − 0.18, p < .01, 95% CI [− 0.30, − 0.07]). Examination with symptom type (internalizing or externalizing) as a moderator found that the significant difference remained for externalizing (g = − 0.20, p = .01, 95% CI [− 0.35, − 0.05]) but not internalizing psychopathology (p = .11). Findings provide evidence of the importance of including parents in adolescent therapy, particularly for externalizing problems.