Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up for Depression

The overarching goal is to pilot the Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC) intervention for mothers with heightened depressive symptom and their children with heightened internalizing symptoms.

Exposure to maternal depressive symptoms increases children's risk for developing anxiety and depressive symptoms ("internalizing symptoms"). Maternal depressive symptoms and children's internalizing symptoms may be reciprocally related over time. Optimal interventions for children's internalizing symptoms may involve treatment components for mothers, children, and the maternal-child relationship. The Attachment and Biobehavioral Catch-up (ABC) intervention is a empirically-supported, family-based treatment program that has been shown to be beneficial for children in varied high-risk family environments, but has yet to be tested among mothers and children recruited on the basis of heightened depressive and internalizing symptoms, respectively. The overarching goal is to examine the acceptability, feasibility, and preliminary effects of the ABC program on a sample of mother-child dyads (n = 20) with heightened depressive and internalizing symptoms. Our specific aims are:

1. To evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of ABC for mothers with depressive symptoms and their offspring with internalizing symptoms
2. To explore whether children who receive ABC show improvement in internalizing symptoms from pre- to post-intervention
3. To explore whether mothers who receive ABC show improvement in depressive symptoms from pre- to post-intervention
4. To explore whether parents and children who receive ABC show more adaptive physiological responses to stress from pre- to post-intervention