Family intervention and prevention of behavioural and emotional disorders in childhood and adolescence

The chapter outlines the conceptual and empirical bases for the development of a comprehensive parenting, and family intervention program as a part of a multicomponent strategy to prevent behavioral and emotional problems in children and adolescents. An effective population level parenting strategy must make explicit the kinds of parenting practices that are considered harmful to children. The core constructs believed to underpin competent parenting need to be articulated so that targets for intervention can be specified. A population perspective requires a range of effective family interventions to be available. The approach to family intervention must also be subjected to comprehensive and systematic evaluation with rigorous scientific controls using either intra subject replication designs or traditional randomized controlled clinical trials with sufficient statistical power to detect meaningful differences between intervention and control conditions. An effective population strategy should be tailored in such a way that it is accessible, relevant, and respectful of the cultural values, beliefs, aspirations, traditions, and identified needs of different ethnic groups. Children's behavior problems and parental adjustment difficulties tend to co-vary. Even though a child may not be showing significant overt signs of maladjustment, the environmental conditions that give rise to subsequent problems may be operative within the family