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Mothers’ Mental Health Treatment Associated with Greater Adolescent Mental Health Service Use for Depression

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Abstract

Despite concerns surrounding depression in adolescence and the existence of effective treatments, adolescent depression often goes untreated. In 2014, only 41.2% of adolescents experiencing a major depressive episode (MDE) received mental health treatment. Parents play a key role in adolescents’ treatment utilization. We examined whether among mothers with any mental illness, mothers’ utilization of mental health treatment was associated with greater likelihood of their adolescent children who experienced an MDE receiving mental health treatment. Using nationally representative data from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health (2008–2014), we performed logistic regression analysis to model the odds of adolescents (aged 12 to 17 years) with a past year MDE receiving any mental health treatment in the past year as a function of their mothers’ mental health treatment utilization in the past year, adjusting for control variables. The rate of adolescent treatment utilization was 66% when mothers had utilized treatment, as compared to 45% when mothers did not utilize treatment (p < 0.001). The odds of an adolescent with an MDE receiving mental health treatment were two times greater when the mother received mental health treatment as compared to adolescents whose mothers did not receive any mental health treatment (OR = 2.09, 95% CI [1.04, 4.17]). There was no effect of adolescent gender (OR = 1.15, 95% CI [0.40, 3.28]) or interaction between gender and mothers’ treatment (OR = 0.95, 95% CI [0.26, 3.46]). Barriers to adolescent mental health treatment may be lower when mothers receive mental health treatment.

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Acknowledgements

The views expressed here are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. These findings were presented during poster sessions at the main 2016 Annual Research Meeting of AcademyHealth and the Behavioral Health Interest Group Meeting.

Author Contributions

L.J.S.: designed the study, consulted on the data analyses, and wrote the paper. M.M.A.: collaborated with the design, analyzed the data, collaborated with the writing and editing of the final manuscript.

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  1. Center for Behavioral Health Statistics and Quality, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, Rockville, MD, 20852, USA

    Laura J. Sherman & Mir M. Ali

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  1. Laura J. Sherman
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Correspondence to Laura J. Sherman.

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The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Ethical Approval

This article does not contain any studies with human participants or animals performed by any of the authors. The National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) is sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and was conducted by Research Triangle Institute (RTI) International. The NSDUH was reviewed by one of RTI’s Institutional Review Boards (IRBs) before interviews were conducted using guidelines from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office for Human Research Protections.

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Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Sherman, L.J., Ali, M.M. Mothers’ Mental Health Treatment Associated with Greater Adolescent Mental Health Service Use for Depression. J Child Fam Stud 26, 2762–2771 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10826-017-0781-x

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