Parenting Strategies:
Protecting your child’s mental health
Mental health problems like depression and anxiety are common in young people.
Parents have an important positive influence on their child’s mental wellbeing. There’s now good evidence to show that by supporting parents in their parenting we can help children and teenagers to stay well.
This website provides practical guidelines on how parents can support their child’s wellbeing. Our guidelines are based on high quality scientific evidence and international expert consensus.
Currently, most of our content focusses on reducing risk of depression and anxiety disorders. We also have a set of guidelines on school reluctance and refusal, and on preventing alcohol misuse in teenagers.
Although these guidelines were developed to help parents prevent these problems in their children, the suggested strategies may also be useful for parents whose child is already experiencing some problems with depression or anxiety.
NEW: Guidelines for parents of children and teenagers with school reluctance or refusal difficulties
Responding to school reluctance or refusal:
Strategies for parents
New evidence-based parenting guidelines for parents of primary and secondary school-aged children who are struggling with school attendance. These guidelines are intended for parents who are worried about their child’s engagement with school and those whose child is already experiencing school reluctance or refusal.
Guidelines for parents of teenagers
(aged 12-17 years)
NEW: Parenting guidelines for prevention of depression
& anxiety (COVID-19 update)
We’ve recently updated our original parenting guidelines for prevention of adolescent depression and anxiety disorders. These guidelines contain all of the original content, plus new expert-endorsed recommendations for protecting teen mental health during the COVID-19 pandemic. For the most up-to-date advice, we recommend downloading these guidelines.
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Parenting guidelines for prevention of depression
& anxiety (2013 edition)
Our original parenting guidelines for parents of adolescents, based on decades of scientific research on what parents can do to help prevent these problems in their teenage children. These guidelines do not contain the latest COVID-19 content.
Would you like to go through the guidelines for parenting TEENS in an interactive online program? Join Partners in Parenting via headspace!
Partners in Parenting (PiP) is an evidenced-based online parenting program designed to help parents and carers build skills and confidence to support their teenager's mental health, specifically to reduce the risk and impact of depression and anxiety problems.
PiP is now freely available to any Australian parent or carer via the headspace online account.
Click the button below to learn more or to sign up.
