The Relation between Parent Mental Health and Child Internalizing Symptoms in Parent-Child Interaction Therapy

The present study evaluated whether families receiving Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) experienced significant improvements in both parent and child internalizing symptoms, and if so, whether the relationship between improvement in child externalizing symptoms and internalizing symptoms was mediated by reductions in parenting stress and parent depressive symptoms. Participants were an ethnically diverse sample of 72 families with 2-7-year-old children experiencing clinically significant externalizing symptoms who were assigned to receive a version of PCIT in one of two previously conducted clinical trials designed to evaluate culturally modified versions of PCIT. Analyses revealed that parent-reported child internalizing symptoms, parenting stress, and parent depressive symptoms improved significantly from pre to post treatment in PCIT. Additionally, the relation between child externalizing improvement and internalizing improvement was mediated through reduction in parenting stress, but not parent depressive symptoms. These findings suggest that ethnically diverse children are likely to experience significant improvement in co-occurring externalizing and internalizing symptoms following PCIT. Furthermore, decreases in parenting stress may play a role in the improvement of child internalizing symptoms.