IMPROVEMENTS IN MENTALIZING AS A MECHANISM OF CHANGE IN PSYCHOTHERAPY FOR DEPRESSED AND SUICIDAL ADOLESCENTS

Suicide is the second leading cause of death for teens in the United States. The objective of this NIMH funded study is to determine whether improvements in adolescent mentalizing (the ability to make generally accurate inferences about the thoughts, emotions, behaviors and intentions of others), over the course of 16 weeks of psychotherapy, predict adolescent suicide risk symptom reduction. If we can identify improvements in mentalizing as a predictor of suicide risk symptom reduction, we will have valuable new information to: 1) help create more effective risk screening tools; 2) better assess treatment progress; and 3) design more effective and targeted intervention and prevention programs.

PRESCHOOL FAMILY DEVELOPMENT STUDY

The primary aim of this study is to explore the relationships between various contextual stressors, parent-child relationship quality and children’s emotional development in a sample of families with pre-school aged children in Philadelphia, PA. In particular, the study will examine income-to-needs ratio, experiences of racism-related stress and trauma and other stressors and their relationship to parental stress, parent-child relationship quality and children’s outcomes. The study will also examine potential protective factors within these families.

Family Safety Net 2 (FSN2)

FSN2 is a NIMH-funded R01 randomized controlled clinical trial comparing Attachment-Based Family Therapy (ABFT) to individual supportive therapy for treating depressed and suicidal adolescents. Many of the families in the sample for this study come from low-income backgrounds, and over 40% of the participants in the sample identified as members of racial or ethnic minority groups. Research aimed to pinpoint specific mechanisms in both adolescents and their caregivers that promote healthy parent-teen relationship growth during treatment with ABFT. Ongoing studies are using developmental research methodology (observational coding, family interaction tasks) to attempt to measure treatment related changes in caregivers over the course of therapy (e.g. parent’s emotion coaching skills, parent’s emotional intelligence and perspective taking abilities with their adolescents) and whether and how treatment impacts positive parenting processes (e.g. parental warmth, sensitivity, responsiveness).

Empathy and Responsiveness Study (EARS)

This study is a longitudinal developmental study examining the relationship between maternal facilitative emotional intelligence, observed sensitive and responsive parenting and children’s adaptive behavior and developmental outcomes in a sample of mothers and pre-school aged children enrolled in Head Start. All families met income and poverty threshold requirements for participation in Head Start. Data collection for this study is complete. Analyses and write-up are ongoing. Results thus far have provided support for parental knowledge about emotions as a potential important influence on parents' tendency to respond sensitively and positively to young children. Furthermore results support past findings on the role of positive parenting in young children’s healthy development and suggest that parents’ understanding of emotions (measured as emotional intelligence) may be another important contributor to children’s growth and adaptive outcomes.

Research Assistants

• Erika Feeney, MS

Doctoral Students

• Katherine Dilks, LMFT
• Dara Herbert, LMFT