Sibling Support Program: A Family-Centered Mental Health Initiative

Sibling Support Program: A Family-Centered Mental Health Initiative was developed at the Eunice Kennedy Shriver Center of the University of Massachusetts Medical School. The project is currently implemented at Cambridge Health Alliance in Cambridge, Massachusetts as an IRB-approved research study, and at another Boston-based hospital as a Quality Improvement (QI) initiative. The program was also piloted at Boston Children\u27s Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. The project explores the impact of mental illness on typically developing siblings and caregivers of children with psychiatric needs. Project goals: to increase resiliency and mitigate the trauma commonly experienced by siblings of children admitted for psychiatric hospitalization; to build skills, competency and confidence among parents; to help restore family stability post-discharge; to build capacity among medical practitioners. Interventions include psycho-educational groups for caregivers, and sibling support groups for children growing up alongside the patient. Participants complete surveys following the intervention to report on knowledge learned, satisfaction level, and behavioral change anticipated by the participant. Over 1,500 participants have participated in this innovative program that utilizes parent mentors and medical trainees to deliver interventions, with high satisfaction scores among participants. Results suggest that a child\u27s mental illness can be traumatic for family members, and that sharing stories can alleviate the stress and anxiety related to living in a home with a child with mental illness. The program serves as a training rotation for psychiatry residents through Harvard Medical School

Sibling Support Program: A Novel Peer Support Intervention for Parents, Caregivers and Siblings of Youth Experiencing Mental Illness

Caregivers and siblings of youth with mental illness often experience role-related psychological challenges, and it is important to focus on the needs of these family members. Existing literature demonstrates that caregivers and affected children benefit from participation in peer support and family-centered programs. This paper describes the Sibling Support Program: A Family-Centered Mental Health Initiative (SSP), a novel intervention for families of youth with mental illness. The SSP distinguishes itself from existing family-centered programs in that it utilizes a unique combination of peer support, parent mentor guidance, and clinician-led group therapy. The paper details the structure of the treatment model and presents preliminary data from participant surveys. Results show preliminary indications that the program provides both emotional and practical benefits. Along with high satisfaction ratings, family members report decreased feelings of isolation, gains in knowledge, and more positive thinking after program participation. Caregivers report that the SSP helped improve their understanding about the impact of a child’s mental illness on family members, and that they learned about effective family management strategies and access to resources. Siblings report learning coping strategies and feeling better after meeting peers with shared experiences

Correction: Common variant burden contributes to the familial aggregation of migraine in 1,589 families

(Neuron 98, 743–753.e1–e4; May 16, 2018) In the original publication of this paper, the middle initial of Michael D. Ferrari's name was inadvertently left out. This has since been corrected online. The authors apologize for the error.</p

Common Variant Burden Contributes to the Familial Aggregation of Migraine in 1,589 Families

Complex traits, including migraine, often aggregate in families, but the underlying genetic architecture behind this is not well understood. The aggregation could be explained by rare, penetrant variants that segregate according to Mendelian inheritance or by the sufficient polygenic accumulation of common variants, each with an individually small effect, or a combination of the two hypotheses. In 8,319 individuals across 1,589 migraine families, we calculated migraine polygenic risk scores (PRS) and found a significantly higher common variant burden in familial cases (n = 5,317, OR = 1.76, 95% CI = 1.71–1.81, p = 1.7 × 10−109) compared to population cases from the FINRISK cohort (n = 1,101, OR = 1.32, 95% CI = 1.25–1.38, p = 7.2 × 10−17). The PRS explained 1.6% of the phenotypic variance in the population cases and 3.5% in the familial cases (including 2.9% for migraine without aura, 5.5% for migraine with typical aura, and 8.2% for hemiplegic migraine). The results demonstrate a significant contribution of common polygenic variation to the familial aggregation of migraine. Gormley et al. use polygenic risk scores to show that common variation, captured by genome-wide association studies, in combination contributes to the aggregation of migraine in families. The results may have similar implications for other complex traits in general.</p