Focus on stressed-out parents is ‘urgently needed’

Jordanian teacher Huda Abu al-Khair reads stories to children in a classroom in Amman as part of the “We Love Reading” initiative – Copyright AFP Khalil MAZRAAWI

The experience of raising a child can produce a range of emotions for a parent or caregiver. Sometimes these emotions are suboptimal for rising children and these emotions can be a consequence of modern living.

A recent U.S. surgeon general’s advisory outlining an urgent need to support increasingly stressed-out parents highlights an important and growing issue, says Virginia Tech ‘s Rosanna Breaux. Dr. Breaux’s research focuses on the social, emotional, and academic functioning of children and adolescents, particularly those with ADHD.

Breaux is a psychologist at Virginia Tech who directs the Child Study Centre. She observes that how well parents manage their emotions is crucial for their own parenting experience and for the health of both themselves and their children.

“Parents not only need to stay calm themselves, but they also need to help their children, especially younger ones, manage their emotions,” Breaux comments.

Breaux adds that managing parental stress and decreasing emotion dysregulation is an issue that deserves attention and more research.

The academic notes that programs aimed at helping parents and children are often done separately, with different therapists treating the parent and child. These therapists often do not communicate much with each other due to ethical and practical reasons.

Furthermore, as a mother herself, Breaux says she understands parental stress firsthand: “Navigating postpartum depression, the strong emotions that result from hormonal changes, and the feelings of uncertainty and helplessness that come with being a new parent, I was certainly overwhelmed at times; especially in trying to find a new work-life balance”. 

Breaux says there has been growing recognition over the past decade of the need for better interventions that simultaneously consider parent and child mental health, with interventions specifically targeting parent mental health (for example, depression, anxiety, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder) and emotion dysregulation through therapy or pharmacological treatment.

With this, Breaux finds: “This is critical, particularly for disorders with high heritability such as ADHD and autism, especially since many parents of children with these neurodevelopmental conditions display both emotion dysregulation and increased risk for a range of psychological disorders.”

Breaux explains that this is also important for families of adolescents with personality disorder traits such as borderline personality disorder, which has modest heritability and is often characterized by emotional regulation and challenges in the parent-child relationship.