ACT2ParenTeens

Anxiety-related symptoms have been increasingly experienced by adolescents as early as 15 years old and associate with long-lasting impairment. Those symptoms have consistently been linked to rearing practices that may sustain (e.g., behavioral control) or help to cope with (e.g., autonomy granting) adolescent anxiety. In turn, those parental acts may reflect the parents’ psychological inflexibility or flexibility. Such psychological processes are at the core of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), both as a conceptual and intervention approach. Still, previous works have either failed to provide empirical evidence on conceptualizing parental (un)workable acts in relation to ACT processes or in using ACT to promote workable and meaningful acts within parent-adolescent dyads who are coping with adolescent anxiety. The current research project intends to address those gaps by working with parent-adolescent dyads to understand which parental acts seem to be associated with how adolescent cope with anxiety (Study 1) and to develop and explore the usability and helpfulness of the ACT2ParenTeens web-based intervention (Study 2).