Recently, research presented at the annual conference of the American Psychological Society showed that the link between parents and children goes far beyond similar appearances or behaviors, because the symptoms of depression in adolescents appear to be related to parents.
According to Dr. Kelsey R. Howard of teenagers’ depression is improved through treatment, the depression experienced by their parents will also improve.
New concept psychology expert Professor Rong Xinqi said: "Now, more and more children and adolescents suffer from depression, and they often say that they often feel sad and desperate, and even have the idea of suicide."
Moreover, in recent years, the suicide rate from elementary school to college, and even graduate and doctoral students has been rising. Further research on adolescent depression may be helpful to clinical psychologists and practitioners in the psychology industry in the face of these worrying data and trends.
In the above study, a total of 325 adolescents diagnosed with depression and their 325 parents or guardians participated in the long-term study. These adolescents were randomly assigned to one of three groups: people receiving cognitive behavioral therapy, people taking antidepressants, and people using both treatment options. The first treatment period lasted for nearly a year, followed by another one year of follow-up.
According to the researchers, one in four parents also reported moderate to severe depression before treatment.
treatment process is not family-based, although some parts include parents. Nevertheless, the results showed a positive chain reaction because similar symptoms of parents were reduced when the severity of depression in adolescents were reduced, regardless of the treatment regimen.
"Depression is a huge global mental health problem and we need to take various ways to better cope with it. We believe our study is the first to evaluate how children's emotional health affects parents," said Dr. Mark A. Reinecke, co-author of the study.
Dr Howard said these findings may be helpful and inspiring to clinical psychologists and psychological counselors and therapists because they may want to assess the level of depression and mental health of parents or provide appropriate help and support when treating their children’s depression.
"The concept that emotions are ‘contagious’ and spread between people is well known to most people," Professor Rong explained. "This work opens up a range of possibilities for future study of the family-wide effects of adolescent depression treatment."
