The Perceived Impact of Parental Depression on the Narrative Construction of Personal Identity: Reflections from Emerging Adults

This paper presents a narrative analysis of emerging adults’ perceptions of the impact of parental depression on themselves as they reflected back on their lives in their natal home. Archived interview narratives were analyzed from sixteen respondents from a preventive intervention study of depression in families. The perceptions of parental depression and the perceived impact of parental depression were found to fall into five perspectives: resistance (no impact), negativity (being disadvantaged), ambivalent perspectives (disadvantaged but also sensitized), acceptance (reconciling with loss), and, compassion (sensitivity and caregiving). The findings from the narratives indicated that the perceived impacts of parental depression spanned a spectrum of responses, not all of which were negative. Emerging adults with their own history of depression reported a more resistant or negative perceived impact of parental depression, and more boys than girls narrated perceived negative impacts of parental depression on the self. These perspectives on parental depression derived from the narratives offer clinicians and family therapists a means of understanding the impact of depression on emerging adults’ sense of self. Implications of language usage, such as tense and coherence, are also discussed

Increasing Understanding in Children of Depressed Parents: Predictors and Moderators of Intervention Response

We evaluated predictors and moderators of differential response to two family-based depression prevention programs for families with a depressed parent: a clinician-facilitated intervention and a lecture group intervention. Individual and family level variables were examined using regression analyses with generalized estimating equations. For the outcome of child understanding of depression, parental changes in child-related behaviors and attitudes predicted greater child understanding ( < 0.001). For the parent outcome of behavior and attitude change, across intervention conditions, younger parent age ( < 0.05), female parent gender ( < 0.01), more chronic and severe parental depression history ( < 0.05), lower SES ( < 0.05), and single-parent status ( < 0.05) were associated with better outcomes across conditions. Effect sizes were moderate, ranging from 0.4 to 0.7 SD. Family and marital functioning were not found to be predictors of any outcomes. When both parents were depressed at baseline, there was no difference in the clinician-versus lecture-based approach, and when only the father was depressed, families reported more changes with the clinician condition than with the lecture condition ( < 0.05). Findings from this study can help identify intervention strategies that are appropriate for different types of at-risk individuals and families

Mechanisms of Risk and Resilience in Military Families: Theoretical and Empirical Basis of a Family-Focused Resilience Enhancement Program

Recent studies have confirmed that repeated wartime deployment of a parent exacts a toll on military children and families and that the quality and functionality of familial relations is linked to force preservation and readiness. As a result, family-centered care has increasingly become a priority across the military health system. FOCUS (Families OverComing Under Stress), a family-centered, resilience-enhancing program developed by a team at UCLA and Harvard Schools of Medicine, is a primary initiative in this movement. In a large-scale implementation project initiated by the Bureau of Navy Medicine, FOCUS has been delivered to thousands of Navy, Marine, Navy Special Warfare, Army, and Air Force families since 2008. This article describes the theoretical and empirical foundation and rationale for FOCUS, which is rooted in a broad conception of family resilience. We review the literature on family resilience, noting that an important next step in building a clinically useful theory of family resilience is to move beyond developing broad “shopping lists” of risk indicators by proposing specific mechanisms of risk and resilience. Based on the literature, we propose five primary risk mechanisms for military families and common negative “chain reaction” pathways through which they undermine the resilience of families contending with wartime deployments and parental injury. In addition, we propose specific mechanisms that mobilize and enhance resilience in military families and that comprise central features of the FOCUS Program. We describe these resilience-enhancing mechanisms in detail, followed by a discussion of the ways in which evaluation data from the program’s first 2 years of operation supports the proposed model and the specified mechanisms of action