MétaCan
Menu
Back to cohort
Record W4411995477 · doi:10.1136/bmjment-2025-301613

Universal, selective and indicated parenting interventions to prevent the development of adverse mental health outcomes in youth: a meta-review of systematic reviews

2025· review· en· W4411995477 on OpenAlexaff
Meredith Han, Edward Chesney, Valerie Ng, Joanna K. Bright, Yashna K Sagar, Ellie Baker, Michael J. Meaney, Evelyn Law

Bibliographic record

VenueBMJ Mental Health · 2025
Typereview
Languageen
FieldPsychology
TopicChild and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional Development
Canadian institutionsMcGill UniversityDouglas Mental Health University Institute
FundersMinistry of Education - SingaporeSingapore Institute for Clinical SciencesNational University of Singapore
KeywordsPsychological interventionSystematic reviewMental healthMedicineMeta-analysisMoodRandomized controlled trialMEDLINEClinical psychologyPsychiatryPsychology

Abstract

fetched live from OpenAlex

BACKGROUND: Preventive interventions in the form of parenting support can reduce the risk of mental disorders in children. Summarising the effectiveness of parenting interventions across different levels of prevention can inform the prioritisation of the intervention. OBJECTIVES: We conducted a meta-review of systematic reviews and meta-analyses on universal, selective and indicated parenting interventions to prevent adverse mental health outcomes in youth. STUDY SELECTION AND ANALYSIS: PubMed, Ovid, Embase and PsycNet were searched. Systematic reviews consisting of randomised controlled trials of preventative parenting interventions were included. We provided a narrative synthesis of the results and assessed the quantity and quality of evidence for each level of prevention (ie, universal, selective, indicated) and mental health outcome. FINDINGS: We identified 32 systematic reviews and meta-analyses, which included 354 randomised controlled trials, consisting of over 74 558 children and adolescents. Universal parenting interventions were effective in delaying the initiation of alcohol and cannabis use, but did not have consistent findings in preventing disruptive behaviour and mood disorders. Selective interventions were predominantly beneficial for disruptive behavioural problems across a variety of risk factors. Indicated interventions found substantial and consistent evidence for reducing problems in children with behavioural problems. Caution is warranted when interpreting findings, as the overall confidence rating of most reviews was very low, especially in the reporting of study selection and justifying exclusions in the AMSTAR-2. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings highlight the need for robust evidence synthesis. Despite the limitations of the current evidence base, parenting interventions hold promise for preventing mental health disorders.

Fetched live from OpenAlex and de-inverted. Abstracts are not stored in this database: the inverted indexes are 8.6 GB of the frame’s 9.3 GB of text, and the host has 13 GB free.

How this classification was reachedexpand

Full frame machine prediction

Teacher imitation

Not calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.

metaresearch head score (Codex)0.031
metaresearch head score (Gemma)0.107
Version: metacan-v3-hybrid-931329e0061cValidation status: machine_predicted_unvalidated
Candidate categoriesnone
Consensus categoriesnone
DomainCandidate signal: none · Consensus signal: none
Study designCandidate signal: Systematic review · Consensus signal: Systematic review
GenreCandidate signal: Review · Consensus signal: Review
Teacher disagreement score0.031
Threshold uncertainty score0.166

Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)

CategoryCodexGemma
Metaresearch0.0310.107
Meta-epidemiology (narrow)0.0040.003
Meta-epidemiology (broad)0.0210.035
Bibliometrics0.0160.013
Science and technology studies0.0010.001
Scholarly communication0.0060.005
Open science0.0030.004
Research integrity0.0030.003
Insufficient payload (model declined to judge)0.0050.000

Machine scores (provisional)

The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.

Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.

Opus teacher head0.205
GPT teacher head0.475
Teacher spread0.270 · how far apart the two teachers sit on this one work
Validation statusscore_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from it

Classification

machine, unvalidated

Machine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.

The models applied no category: nothing in the taxonomy fit this work.
Study designSystematic review
Domainnot available
GenreReview

How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".

Quick stats

Citations6
Published2025
Admission routes1
Has abstractyes

Explore more

Same venueBMJ Mental HealthSame topicChild and Adolescent Psychosocial and Emotional DevelopmentFrench-language works237,207