Parent Involvement in Weekly Outpatient Treatment

Parent involvement is recognized as a crucial component of cognitive-behavioral treatment across many different conditions. Parents serve in different roles in their child’s therapy, including as informants about history and development, providers of practical support, coaches or guides supporting their child in implementing treatment strategies, active treatment participants, and recipients of their own intervention relevant to their child’s treatment goals. There are various complexities that may arise with respect to parental involvement, such as issues around privacy and confidentiality, or challenges related to parent-child relationships or other family dynamics. These complexities are critical to understand and manage within the therapeutic relationship. Despite these potential issues, a robust literature supports the importance of parental involvement for treatment engagement and attendance, behavioral management, skills practice and generalization, and addressing parental mental health and family functioning. Further research is needed to understand and characterize the factors affecting parental involvement and its effectiveness in child CBT. In addition, there are important clinical considerations that intersect with parental involvement for youth with diverse identities such as racial and/or ethnically minoritized youth and LGBTQ+ youth.