Mental health articles

child psychiatrist perspective Over 50 % of children who have a parent with affective illness experience psychological symptoms (Beardslee et al. 1998), with three times the rates of mood or anxiety disorders reported . Beardslee published a book for families and lay caregivers about the process of dealing with depression in families. It is important to highlight family factors that protect children, such as good parenting and stable relationships. Family interventions focus on improving family resilience and developing protective factors in the face of parental mental illness. Family interventions, such as these described below, can reduce the incidence of childhood illness by as much as 40 %. An analysis of 13 randomized controlled trials of family interventions with parents with mental illness (n¼1,490 children) found that cognitive, behavioral, or psychoeducational family interventions were effective in reducing childhood illness. Family interventions, such as Family Talk, are targeted specifically to prevent depression Beardslee et al..“Family Talk” is a program that targets families where a parent is diagnosed with a major depressive disorder or bipolar disorder and who have children aged 8 and 15 years who have never been treated for a mood disorder. Family Talk uses a cognitive psychoeducational approach of 6–10 sessions .A related program, called “FAMpod—Families Preventing and Overcoming Depression,” has received high ratings in the National Registry of Effective Programs and has been implemented in Finland, Norway, Costa Rica, and many areas in the USA. An adapted family intervention is being successfully piloted with immigrant Latina mothers with depression and their families (Valdez et al. 2013). An adaptation being implemented with military families is called Families OverComing Under Stress (FOCUS) .The core elements of FOCUS are (1) family Psychologic Health Check-in; (2) family-specific psychoeducation; (3) family narrative timeline; and (4) family-level resilience skills (e.g., problem solving). A family program that is not specific for depression is called Family Options and employs a care-coordination model tailored for individual families where a parent has a serious mental illness.

Tags: child, psychiatrist