title: Change in Parental Depressive Symptoms in Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy: Results from a Randomized Controlled Trial.
abstract: Depressive symptoms are frequently described in parents whose children have been exposed to traumatic events. Hence, including nonoffending parents in trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy (TF-CBT) for children and adolescents may help both children and their parents to cope with the trauma. Up to now, three randomized controlled trials have investigated parental depressive symptoms after TF-CBT. Given the ambiguous results, further effectiveness trials are needed to investigate parental benefit from TF-CBT. The aim of this study is to determine whether TF-CBT is superior to waitlist (WL) regarding change in parental depressive symptoms.
  
  
  
  Parents, N = 84, whose children (age 6-17 years) were randomly assigned to either 12 sessions of TF-CBT (n = 40) or to WL condition (n = 44) completed the Beck Depression Inventory-Second Edition (BDI-II) for pre-post comparison. The group difference was tested through repeated-measures analyses of variance (ANOVA). The change in parental depressive symptoms was additionally categorized using the reliable change index.
  
  
  
  Repeated-measures ANOVA indicated a significant time effect F(1, 82) = 2.55, p = 0.02, and no significant time-group interaction F(1, 82) = 1.09, p = 0.30, suggesting a similar reduction in parental depressive symptoms in both groups. Across both conditions, most of the parents remained unchanged (n = 62), some of them improved (n = 17), and a few deteriorated (n = 5). There was no significant difference between the conditions (χ2(2) = 1.74; p = 0.42).
  
  
  
  Contrary to findings of several previous studies, our results suggest no superiority of TF-CBT in comparison with WL regarding change in depressive symptoms in parents. This might be due to different types of the child's trauma. Parental benefit from TF-CBT was found in samples of sexually abused, but not in children and adolescents exposed to diverse trauma types.
authors.affiliation: Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry/Psychotherapy, University of Ulm , Ulm, Germany .
authors.forename: Dunja
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Tutus
authors.affiliation: Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry/Psychotherapy, University of Ulm , Ulm, Germany .
authors.forename: Ferdinand
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Keller
authors.affiliation: Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry/Psychotherapy, University of Ulm , Ulm, Germany .
authors.forename: Cedric
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Sachser
authors.affiliation: Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry/Psychotherapy, University of Ulm , Ulm, Germany .
authors.forename: Elisa
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Pfeiffer
authors.affiliation: Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry/Psychotherapy, University of Ulm , Ulm, Germany .
authors.forename: Lutz
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Goldbeck
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D002648:Child; D002650:Child Abuse, Sexual / Q000628:therapy; D015928:Cognitive Behavioral Therapy / Q000379:methods*; D003863:Depression / Q000209:etiology / Q000628:therapy*; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology*; D016037:Single-Blind Method; D013313:Stress Disorders, Post-Traumatic / Q000628:therapy*; D016896:Treatment Outcome
keywords: Trauma-Focused Cognitive Behavioral Therapy; parental depression; parental participation in child psychotherapy; pediatric PTSD