Early Intervention Program in Youth-to-Parent Aggression: Clinically Relevant long-term Changes

Abstract

Abstract Purpose Practitioners in child and family services are able to identify cases of youth-to-parent aggression. The aim of this study was to evaluate long-term effects of the Early Intervention Program in Situations of Youth-to-Parent Aggression (EI-YPA), which was implemented in a Children and Family Services context on the outcome variables of adolescents and parents (individual behavior and health outcomes), indicating the strength of the evidence. Methods The participants were members of 39 Spanish families with children between 12 and 17 years (N = 101; 40 adolescents and 61 parents) and a quasi-experimental design of repeated measures was applied. EI-YPA provides positive evidence and experiences based on the reports of children and parents. In order to analyze whether the improvements were clinically relevant, a reliable change index was used. Results Significant improvements concerning aggressive behavior at home, clinical symptoms and family conflict were found. Effect sizes were large for aggressive behavior indicators (aggressive discipline d = 1.19; psychological YPA d = 0.93), and depressive symptomatology of adolescents (d = 0.80). Conclusion The positive changes found indicate the long-term efficacy of the EI-YPA on behavioral variables and clinical symptoms of children and parents, as well as the family conflict perception. This study contributes to increasing the evidence quality of EI-YPA as a potential evidence-based program.