Children of Depressed Parents: Family Based Prevention

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Extensive research documents that children of depressed parents are at a significantly higher risk for developing a variety of socio-emotional difficulties than children of non-depressed parents. Surprisingly, little research has been conducted to develop prevention interventions for this population. Furthermore, of the developmental and treatment research that does exist with this at-risk group, low income, urban families are rarely included. This is surprising given that the economic hardship itself is a strong risk factor for both maternal depression and poor child development. This R34 application will address this deficit by sup porting the development, manualization and pilot testing of the Protecting Families Program (PFP), a family-based, multi-component prevention program for low-income, urban, depressed parents and their offspring. The target population is parents in treatment for depression in a community mental health clinic, and their children between the ages of 9-12. PFP will serve as a 10 week adjunctive service to the parents' individual treatment. The program consists of three main components: 1) a community meal at the beginning of each session; 2) a parent skills training group; and 3) a concurrent cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) group for the focal child. The parenting component will focus on educating parents about depression, its impact on the family and on promoting positive parenting practices. The child CBT component will be based on the Penn Optimism Program, a manualized and well-validated prevention model for youth at risk for depression. We will write a full multi-component intervention manual, develop and validate an adherence measure, and conduct a randomized pilot study to assess feasibility, acceptability, and gather data for estimating effect size. This work will be conducted at, and in close collaboration with, a local community mental health center (INTERAC) in order to assure the intervention meets the needs of community providers and their patients. his grant will serve as a foundation for a larger randomized clinical trial.