Psychotherapy for Depressed Mothers of Psychiatrically Ill Children

This study will compare a psychotherapy for mothers that targets factors known to be associated with the intergenerational transmission of psychiatric disorders to a nonspecific psychotherapeutic control condition. It will evaluate outcomes in both children and mothers. A modified form of interpersonal psychotherapy for depression, IPT-MOMS, specifically addresses maternal depressive symptoms, maternal interpersonal functioning, and mother-child communication, all factors that contribute to psychiatric illness in youth (Swartz et al., 2006). This application proposes to recruit mother-child dyads, both of whom suffer from psychiatric illness, randomly assign mothers to nine sessions over 3 months of either IPT-MOMS (N=105) or brief supportive psychotherapy (BSP; N=105), and evaluate the impact of acute maternal treatment on child and maternal outcomes at 3, 6, 9, and 12 month follow-up.