Objective: Despite considerable recent growth in research regarding childhood mood disorders, as well as an increased recognition of the prevalence and impairment caused by these illnesses, the development of effective psychosocial treatments for pediatric mood disorders remains a relative work in progress. Previous studies have supported the efficacy of one such treatment -- Multi-Family Psychoeducational Psychotherapy (MF-PEP) -– designed to address the needs of children with mood diagnoses, along with the needs of their families. The current study sought to examine potential moderators of this treatment – in particular, the impact of parent/caregiver mood symptomatology and diagnoses. It was hypothesized that caregiver psychopathology of this type would generally be associated with poorer child treatment outcome, as measured by overall child mood symptomatology (i.e., level of depressive and manic symptoms).
Methods: Participants were 165 children (M = 9.9 years, SD = 1.3) diagnosed with depressive or bipolar disorders, as well as their primary caregivers. Families were assigned to either immediate treatment or 12-month wait-list control groups, and all child participants continued to receive treatment as usual throughout the study.
Results: Primary caregivers of child participants were found to exhibit extremely elevated lifetime prevalence rates of mood diagnoses. However, only a minority of caregivers were identified as meeting criteria for mood diagnoses at study entry, and the level of caregiver mood symptomatology at intake was generally quite low. There were small but significant correlations between baseline caregiver mood symptomatology and baseline child mood symptomatology/global functioning. The presence of caregiver mood diagnosis (either lifetime or current) was consistently and significantly associated with higher child depressive symptomatology at baseline, not associated with child manic symptomatology at baseline, and inconsistently associated with baseline child global functioning. Contrary to expectations, neither the presence of caregiver mood diagnosis (lifetime or current) or levels of baseline caregiver mood symptomatology (overall, depressive, and manic) were found to moderate child treatment outcome, as measured by overall mood symptomatology, depressive symptoms, manic symptoms, or global functioning.
Conclusions: Findings indicate that child treatment outcome following participation in MF-PEP does not appear significantly impacted by caregiver mood symptomatology or the presence of caregiver mood diagnoses. Though further studies are necessary to investigate the generalizability of these results, this study provides initial support that MF-PEP can be successfully implemented with children whose caregivers suffer from their own mood dysfunction.