15 Year Follow-up of New Beginnings Program for Divorced Families

Effects of NBP for Children of Divorce 15 Years Later

The project is a 15-year follow-up of 240 young adults whose families participated in an experimental evaluation of the New Beginnings Program (NBP), a preventive intervention for divorced families. The NBP was provided in late childhood; the follow-up occurred in young adulthood. Families were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: mother program (MP), dual-component mother and child program (MPCP), or literature-control (LC) condition. Programs were designed to change several putative mediators of children's post-divorce mental health problems using empirically-supported change strategies. The investigators expected that the NBP would have either main or risk by program interactive effects on mental health and substance use problems and disorders, developmental tasks, parent-young adult relationships, physical health problems, and competencies, such that YAs who participated in NBP will have better functioning than YAs in the control condition. The investigators expected that the NBP will have either main or risk by program interactive effects on mothers' mental health; those in the NBP are expected to have fewer mental health problems than those in the control condition.

Inclusion Criteria:

• Divorced in past two years
• Female residential parent
• At least one 9-12 year-old child resided (at least 50%) with the mother
• Neither mother nor any child was currently in treatment for mental health problems
• Mother had not remarried nor planned to remarry during the program, and did not have a live-in boyfriend
• Custody was expected to remain stable
• Family resided within an hour drive of program site
• Mother and child could complete assessments in English
• Child was not learning disabled nor in special education
• If diagnosed with attention deficit disorder, child was taking medication

Exclusion Criteria:

• Child scored above 17 on the Children's Depression Inventory (CDI, endorsed an item indicating that s/he wanted to kill her/himself, or scored above the 97th percentile on the Externalizing Subscale (Child Behavior Checklist [CBCL])