It's All About the Relationship: The Role of Attachment in Child-Parent Psychotherapy

School-Based Behavioral Health Programming for Newcomer Youth: A Scoping Review

OBJECTIVE

Newcomer youth experience health disparities in accessing behavioral health services. School-based mental health programming is proposed a potential solution to address these disparities. The present study uses a scoping review methodology to examine the state-of-the-art of the evidence base for school-based mental health programming for newcomer youth. Studies were categorized into a tiered typology using the framework established by the National Center for School Mental Health.

METHODS

Several databases were examined as well as the results of one scoping and two systemic recent reviews.

RESULTS

A total of 37 studies were included in the present analysis, over half from the last decade. Most studies were conducted in the United States and Europe, and most programs were focused on mental health promotion and wellness (Tier 1) or were multi-tiered. Programming for younger children, especially those in early childhood settings, were underrepresented.

CONCLUSIONS

While the literature is promising regarding programming for newcomer youth, particularly the advent of complex multi-tiered programming, many gaps still remain. For example, most programs do not provide information on how programming was adapted for different groups of newcomers with different cultural and contextual needs. Tier 1 programs lack theoretical foundations or theories of change in the design of programming. Further, more research is needed for a group with rising numbers across high- and middle-income countries, particularly for programming targeting early and middle childhood.

Leveraging the developmental neuroscience of caregiving to promote resilience among youth exposed to adversity

Early adversity is a major risk factor for the emergence of psychopathology across development. Identifying mechanisms that support resilience, or favorable mental health outcomes despite exposure to adversity, is critical for informing clinical intervention and guiding policy to promote youth mental health. Here we propose that caregivers play a central role in fostering resilience among children exposed to adversity via caregiving influences on children's corticolimbic circuitry and emotional functioning. We first delineate the numerous ways that caregivers support youth emotional learning and regulation and describe how early attachment lays the foundation for optimal caregiver support of youth emotional functioning in a developmental stage-specific manner. Second, we outline neural mechanisms by which caregivers foster resilience-namely, by modulating offspring corticolimbic circuitry to support emotion regulation and buffer stress reactivity. Next, we highlight the importance of developmental timing and sensitive periods in understanding caregiving-related mechanisms of resilience. Finally, we discuss clinical implications of this line of research and how findings can be translated to guide policy that promotes the well-being of youth and families.

Longitudinal Outcomes of Child Parent Psychotherapy: Response to Commentaries

In response to the commentaries provided by Chu et al. (2020), Harmon et al. (2020), and McMahon & Maxwell (2020) on our longitudinal follow-up of Child-Parent Psychotherapy (CPP) with mothers with depression and their children, we focus on two domains: accessibility and scalability of CPP and identifying empirically supported mechanisms of change in attachment intervention research. In considering the accessibility and scalability of CPP, we discuss issues related to attrition, length of intervention, and implementation with caregivers with depression. Our discussion of mechanisms of change in attachment interventions explores active comparison conditions, theorized mediators, intervention modalities, assessment methods, and longitudinal research designs. This conversation is intended to highlight important areas for future research in the field of attachment interventions, with the goal of informing clinical and systems-level policies and practices.