Youth mental health and the role of parenting interventions

Youth mental health has worsened over recent decades. Parents play a critical role in shaping youth mental health, but evidence-based parenting supports are limited. This resource presents findings from a narrative review of research relating to youth mental health and parenting interventions. The findings highlight the complex and interconnected pressures affecting youth mental health, as well as the challenges parents face in supporting children to cope. It describes how evidence-based parenting interventions can help parents support adolescent mental health, especially when integrated with broader supports in schools, health services and community programs.

Why is this important?

• Despite greater investment in mental health services, evidence suggests that youth mental health has worsened over recent decades, with increasing rates of recorded symptoms of anxiety, depression, self-harm and suicidality.
• Young people face a range of stressors including family conflict, reduced social connection, economic insecurity and climate anxiety. Many of these factors also directly affect parents and influence the family environment in which young people develop.
• Parents can play a critical role in shaping youth mental health. Evidence-based parenting supports are one proposed way that parents can be helped to support youth mental health.

What did they do?

• The authors conducted a narrative review of research on youth mental health and parenting interventions, combined with expert input from members of the Parenting and Family Research Alliance (PAFRA). PAFRA is a multidisciplinary research collaboration that conducts research and advocates on topics relating to parenting, families and evidence-based parenting support.
• The review focused on:
  • family and parenting factors that contribute to worsening youth mental health and that could be targeted in interventions
  • parenting programs aimed at reducing mental health difficulties in children and young people.

What did they find?

• Youth mental health is affected by multiple interacting factors including academic stress, economic insecurity, climate-related stress, social media and technology use, poor sleep and family conflict.
• Parents and young people influence each other’s wellbeing. When young people are struggling, parenting becomes harder, and when parents are stressed or overwhelmed, it becomes harder to provide consistent emotional support to their children. Additionally, parents face increasing pressure to be a ‘perfect parent’.
• Parenting practices and the parent–child relationship are potentially protective factors against youth mental health difficulties. Parenting behaviours that are warm, emotionally responsive, autonomy-supportive but firm on expectations are associated with better youth mental health outcomes.
• There is some evidence that involving parents in interventions for youth mental health can be more effective in reducing behavioural and externalising difficulties than interventions focusing on young people alone.
• Evidence-based parenting interventions that support youth mental health:
  • strengthen parent self-regulation by teaching parents to identify and regulate their emotions and recognise that parenting young people can be a highly stressful period
  • enhance the parent–child relationship by promoting parental warmth, connection, emotional availability and setting consistent boundaries with young people.
• Parenting interventions seem most effective when combined with broader supports, such as schools, health services and community programs, rather than being used in isolation.

What does this mean for practice?

• Practitioners working with young people need to understand the family and environmental context and the role these have as both risks and protective factors for mental health outcomes.
• Parental support is an important way that youth mental health can be supported, especially through interventions that strengthen parental self-regulation and enhance parent–child relationships.
• Integrating parental support with school, health and community interventions, especially for families experiencing disadvantage or higher levels of stress, is likely to be more effective than standalone supports.

This summary is one of the child mental health research highlights for August 2026, prepared by the Australian Institute of Family Studies (AIFS).