Hold me Tight/Let me Go: Effectiveness of a Course to Enhance Parent-adolescent Relationship

Launched by UNIVERSITY OF AMSTERDAM · May 2, 2025

Keywords

ClinConnect Summary

The “Hold me Tight/Let me Go” trial is studying a special program designed to help improve the relationship between parents and their teenage children. This program, called HmT/LmG, involves group sessions where parents can learn skills and receive information, as well as individual sessions for each family. The goal is to see how effective this program is in helping families who are facing challenges in their parent-adolescent relationships, especially when those challenges are causing stress for the teens.

To participate, families need to have at least one parent or primary caregiver and one teenager aged 12 to 18. It’s important that the family is dealing with issues that make their relationship difficult, but participants must not have serious mental health problems that could interfere with their ability to take part in the program. The trial is not yet recruiting participants, but once it starts, families can expect to engage in both group and individual sessions aimed at improving their communication and understanding of one another. This could be a great opportunity for families looking to strengthen their bonds and tackle challenges together.

Gender

ALL

Eligibility criteria

• We will include:
• • 1. Families with one or both parents/primary caretaker (single parent or blended families are allowed) with one adolescent of 12 to 18 years of age;
• • 2. Adolescent problems are deemed to be exacerbated by a stressful parent-adolescent relationship.
• We will exclude:
• • 1. Participants in command of the Dutch language.
• • 2. Parents/primary caretakers and adolescents with severe psychopathology (e.g., psychosis, acute suicidality, severe depression) that will interfere with participation in the program.
• • 3. Parents/primary caretakers already attending systemic therapy or intensive parental guidance during the waiting period and during HmT/LmG. Other individual therapy will be registered during intake, and afterwards by the therapists. During follow-up systemic interventions are allowed but have to be registered.