Caregiver engagement in youth partial hospitalization treatment

Although the importance of caregiver engagement in a child’s psychological treatment is well established within outpatient treatment settings, the question remains whether these findings can be generalized to more intensive treatment settings where caregiver engagement may be more challenging to facilitate. A correlational, multi-informant design was used to collect data by caregiver self-report and therapist-report from a sample of 64 caregivers of youth referred for partial hospitalization. Results show that caregivers’ attitudinal self-assessment of engagement was not significantly related to their self-report of behavioral engagement (e.g. number of family sessions attended) or therapists’ report of caregiver engagement. After controlling for caregiver expectations and therapist ratings of caregiver engagement, only caregiver ratings of attendance at family sessions marginally predicted treatment outcomes, but in the negative direction. Implications for adapting measures of caregiver engagement to intensive treatment settings and its impact on treatment outcomes are discussed.