Description
Treatment goal agreement has been found to be relatively poor between parent and youth dyads, indicating that they often do not agree on the problems that should be the focus of therapy. The lack of agreement between the parent and youth may hinder the effective delivery of mental health services. Understanding factors associated with parent-youth agreement may be very important for Latino families, who often have high rates of unmet need and premature termination of mental health services. Ratings of the severity of the youth's problems have been shown to be associated with greater agreement between the parent and youth on the youth's functional impairment. However, studies have not examined the relationship between stakeholder ratings of problem severity and agreement on therapy goals. The current study focused on the association between parent or youth rated problem severity and agreement between parent-youth dyads on therapy goals for Latino youth. Data were taken from a larger study of multi-stakeholder agreement in youth receiving outpatient mental health services. The current study utilized data from 195 Latino youth (age 12-18 years; 60% male) and their parents/caregivers (90.8% female). Problem severity was measured using the Child Behavior Checklist and the Youth Self Report. The study focused on category match agreement that was achieved when the parent and youth identified a goal belonging to the same category. Category agreement on the goals of therapy between the parent and youth was poor. Results from logistic regression analyses indicated that youth-rated problem severity score was significantly associated with a greater likelihood of agreement between dyads on treatment goals. However, parent-rated problem severity, having a parent-reported problem severity score in the clinical range, and having a youth-reported problem severity score in the clinical range were not associated with greater likelihood of agreement. The results of the current study should be considered preliminary. In addition, future research should explore whether problem severity is associated with goal agreement by problem type (such as internalizing or externalizing behaviors).
