Prevention Programs Help
Kids Whose Parents Divorce
Excerpt By Charnicia E. Huggins, Reuter's Health

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Children of divorced or divorcing parents who participate in intervention programs with their mothers are less likely to have mental health problems during their teen years than their peers, new study findings show.

They are also less likely to use marijuana, alcohol or other drugs, the researchers found.

Previous research has indicated that such problems, as well as lower academic achievement, are more common among children whose parents divorce than children from intact families. In the US, 1.5 million children experience parental divorce each year.

"This is the clearest research evidence we have that the problems children experience from divorce are preventable," study author Dr. Irwin N. Sandler of Arizona State University in Tempe told Reuters Health.

"This is strong evidence that an early investment in prevention pays long-term dividends," he added. "The time and attention divorcing parents spend focusing on parenting their children well following divorce can pay off in the long run."

Sandler and his colleagues studied 218 families with children between the ages of 15 and 19, some of whom participated in a mother-focused or a mother-child focused intervention program for children of divorce from April 1998 through March 2000.

The mother-focused program taught mothers how to effectively discipline and reduce conflict with their child and gave them other strategies for improving the quality of their relationship with their child. The mother-child program taught both mothers and children effective coping and ways to improve their relationship. For comparison, a third group of mothers and children were given self-help books on adjusting to divorce.

Six years later, nearly one-quarter (23.5%) of the teens in the self-help book group met the criteria for a mental disorder in comparison to 11% of the teens who participated in the mother-child program, the investigators report in the October 16th issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Youth in the mother-child program also reported having had fewer sexual partners than those in the comparison group, study findings indicate.

Further, among the teens who had more mental health problems at the start of the study, those who participated in the mother-child program or whose mothers participated in the mother-focused program had lower levels of aggression, hostility and related problems and fewer symptoms of a mental disorder than their peers. Teens whose mothers participated in the mother-focused program also reported less alcohol, marijuana and other drug use than those who had been given the books, study findings indicate.

Thus, "children who were having the most problems when they entered the program are the ones who benefited the most," Sandler said.

Overall, however, the fact that both programs were effective may be due to the mother's improved parenting, according to Sandler.

"Our programs are very active and demanding of parents and kids--they do not involve just passive listening and sharing of problems," he said. "They require active practicing of good parenting skills at home, (including) setting up positive routines in the family to establish the safety and security of the home, during this time when the world seems to be falling apart."

Mothers who are not involved in such programs, however, need not think that their children are doomed to mental health problems and other negative effects of divorce. "Most children adjust quite well following their parents divorce," Sandler said.

Finally, although the study included only mothers, Sandler and his team believe the findings are applicable programs involving fathers.

"We do believe that the same skills--the same fundamentals of warmth and effective disciple--will work for dads as well as moms," he said.

The National Institute of Mental Health helped fund the research.

SOURCE: Journal of the American Medical Association 2002;288;1874-1881.

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