FAMILY-FOCUSED ADOLESCENT & LIFELONG HE...

Young people in Eastern Europe face multiple risks to their mental health, substance use and wellbeing, for many reasons, including poverty, inequality, and other adverse experiences, now exacerbated by the ongoing conflict in Ukraine. Family plays a critical role as a potential buffer for these risks. However, research on evidence-informed approaches to supporting adolescent mental health that are affordable and scalable in LMICs is still limited.

Mental health is more than the absence of mental health problems. Early adolescence is a key period for health because it is a time of vast physical, emotional, and social changes and a distinct phase of brain development. Early adolescence is also the age when about half of mental health problems emerge. Parenting approaches that offer warmth and autonomy have been associated with healthy behaviours in children and adolescents, such as longer and higher quality sleep, healthier nutritional and dietary behaviours, and physical activity, as well as with better mental health, such as lower anxiety and depression symptoms. Parental monitoring and communication about risk behaviours, such as substance use, has been linked to lower rates of risk behaviors among adolescents.

Parenting for Lifelong Health (PLH; https://www.who.int/teams/social-determinants-of-health/parenting-for-lifelong-health) is a suite of group-based socio-behavioural interventions at the individual and family level. PLH is based on evidence regarding the components associated with positive outcomes in parenting practices, adolescent-caregiver communication, and other outcomes among families. PLH was developed with a focus on feasibility of implementation, in collaboration between researchers, World Health Organization and UNICEF, to meet the need of child and adolescent health promotion and prevention of violence against children in LMICs. The programmes are designed to be delivered by staff without specific professional background, and programme manuals are freely available under Creative Commons licensing.

At FLOURISH, our aim is to optimize, and evaluate the effectiveness, cost-effectiveness, and implementation at scale of Parenting for Lifelong Health for Teens.