Caring for the Caregivers: The Critical Link Between Parent and Teen Mental Health
JUNE 2023
Teens’ mental health challenges have drawn a huge amount of attention since the global pandemic, with researchers and pundits pointing to many possible causes or contributing factors. But left largely untold is the story of those who are commonly central in teens’ lives—their parents and caregivers.
Our report, Caring for the Caregivers: The Critical Link Between Parent and Teen Mental Health, suggests that it would be just as right to sound the alarm about parents’ mental health as about teens’ mental health. Parents’ and teens’ emotional health is deeply interwoven, and our data indicate that parents are suffering anxiety and depression at about the same rates as teens.
In December 2022, we conducted two nationally representative surveys in the U.S., one survey with teens and young adults and another with parents or caregivers. While 18% of teens reported suffering anxiety, about 20% of mothers and 15% of fathers reported anxiety. While 15% of teens reported depression, about 16% of mothers and 10% of fathers did, too. According to estimates based on our parent data, over 1/3 of teens had at least one parent who reported anxiety or depression. Almost 40% of teens also reported being at least “somewhat worried” about the mental health of at least one of their parents.
The report also offers five strategies for mitigating these emotional troubles in parents, guiding parents in knowing and providing vital emotional support to their teens, reducing the harmful impact of parental depression and anxiety on teens, and heading off damaging parent-teen dynamics.
Authored by Richard Weissbourd, Milena Batanova, Mary Laski, Joseph McIntyre, Eric Torres, and Nick Balisciano with Shanae Irving, Sawsan Eskander, and Kiran Bhai.
Contact
mcc@gse.harvard.edu
“It would be just as right to sound the alarm about parents’ mental health as about teens’ mental health.”
Key points
Parents are suffering anxiety and depression at about the same rate as teens. Depressed and anxious parents are often wonderful parents despite—and sometimes because of—these emotional challenges. But depression and anxiety in parents are linked to academic, emotional, and physical problems in children.
Depressed teens are about five times more likely than nondepressed teens to have a depressed parent. Anxious teens are about three times more likely than non-anxious teens to have an anxious parent.
A significant majority of parents are attuned to their teens' emotional states and perspectives, but many parents are not. This disconnect is strongly linked to depression and anxiety in both parents and teens.
Teens who are depressed and anxious are far more likely to talk to their friends than their parents about these emotional troubles. Our data also indicate that the more worried teens and young adults are about their parents’ emotional health, the more uncomfortable they are reaching out to their parents about their own emotional struggles.
Teens simply want their parents to listen. Forty percent (40%) of teens reported on our survey that they wanted their parents to “reach out more to ask how [they’re] really doing and to really listen.”
“As one teen said about his parents: ‘Don’t only look at me through the keyhole. Open the door.’”
Prevention strategies
Listening to teens. Depressed and anxious teens are much more likely to reach out to their friends (56%) than their parents (32%) for emotional support. Parents need guidance on specific empathic listening skills that can help them become important sounding boards and advisors to their teens.
Guiding parents in supporting teens’ mental health. Parents need basic facts about anxiety and depression and when a teen needs professional treatment, as well as guidance in managing their own anxiety when their teens are anxious or depressed.
Caring for the caregivers: Promoting parents’ mental health. Community institutions and governments at every level can engage in public education efforts that alert parents and caregivers to signs of depression and anxiety and offer resources for alleviating these challenges.
Guiding parents in talking about their own mental health struggles with teens. Parents and caregivers need culturally attuned strategies for talking appropriately about their own emotional struggles with teens, so that their children don’t interpret these harsh moods as a sign of their failings or as the withdrawal of affirmation or love.
Helping teens cultivate meaning, purpose, and hope. Thirty-six percent (36%) of our teen survey respondents reported little or no “purpose or meaning in life” and this absence strongly correlated with depression and anxiety. Parents can help stem teens’ anxiety and depression by engaging them in activities that focus them on others and/or attaching them to principles and goals larger than themselves—both rich sources of meaning and purpose.
