The Effects of Parent Participation on Child Psychotherapy Outcome: A Meta-Analytic Review

Abstract

Forty-eight child psychotherapy outcome studies offering direct comparisons of an individual child treatment group to a combined parent–child/family therapy treatment group were included in this meta-analytic review. Results indicate that combined treatments produced a moderate effect beyond the outcomes achieved by individual child treatments, with an average weighted effect size that is within the medium range (d = 0.27). Moderator analysis indicated that, compared to non-cognitive-behavioral individual child treatments, cognitive-behavioral individual child treatments were closer in effectiveness to the overall more effective treatments that included parent participation. Results suggest that including parents in the psychotherapeutic treatment of children adds benefits beyond the outcomes achieved by individual child therapies. More research is needed on factors affecting parents' engagement and consistent participation in child psychotherapy treatment and on clinician's utilization of parents as therapy coparticipants.

Acknowledgments

This study was completed as the doctoral dissertation project of Kathy Dowell.

Notes

¹assess-, comparison, effect-, efficacy-, evaluat-, influence, impact, outcome-.

^a Data are reported separately for child-only treatments/combined parent–child treatments.

Note: CBT = cognitive-behavioral therapy.

^a Denotes total number of participants across all groups after attrition, including alternative treatments and control groups.

^b Effect size estimate comparing child-only to combined parent–child treatments.

²A total of 21 studies included control group outcome data that was used to calculate the unweighted average effect size versus child and combined treatment groups. The average effect size for child treatment to controls was 0.25, SD = 1.13 (range 3.35 to −2.98) whereas combined treatment to controls was 0.44, SD = 1.24 (range 3.94 to −2.52).