Parental Guidance for Parents of Highly Dependent Adult Children

Recent years have seen an increase in the number of adult Americans who live with their parents. In the 18 to 34 age group, living with one's parents is currently the most common living arrangement. Some adult children have been using their parents' homes as only a temporary solution due to economic hardship. However, other adults remain at home, highly reliant on their parents, and not in higher education or employment. The latter group (who are at times referred to as 'failure to launch') are considered to suffer from a combination of a personal and familial problem and pose a significant challenge for therapists (Lebowitz, 2016). To date, little evidence exists to guide case conceptualization or intervention strategies. In this protocol, the term "FTL" for the sake of brevity in place of "highly dependent adult children who are not functioning independently" will be used.

For the clinician, work with individuals with FTL cases can seem more like treatment with child patients than adult patients. Parents often initiate clinical contact, and in many cases, the dependent adult is not open or willing to engage in treatment directly.

Dr. Lebowitz and colleagues' work with the parents of youth who suffer from clinical anxiety has suggested a theoretical conceptualization and a means of intervention in cases of FTL. Youth with anxiety display a similar pattern of reliance on parents for help in avoiding the situations they find distressing, a process known as family accommodation. Working with parents on decreasing family accommodation has been found to be efficacious in reducing anxiety and increasing independent coping in youth. This manualized approach, known as SPACE (Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions), has been repeatedly tested in clinical trials, including in randomized controlled trial research.

In the proposed study, the investigators will examine outcomes of a parental guidance program, based on SPACE, for parents of FTL adults (henceforth, SPACE-FTL). The current proposal builds on a published feasibility study that found reducing family accommodation was successful in FTL, and in a considerable proportion of cases the adult children started working or studying or moved to independent lodgings.

In the study, the investigators aim to investigate the SPACE-FTL outcomes including improvement in adult child symptoms and reductions in related impairment (e.g., cost-of-illness), when compared to no treatment (i.e., wait-list control). The primary hypothesis is that SPACE-FTL will decrease FTL severity and impairment, compared with the wait-list control condition. Additional outcomes will relate to the feasibility, acceptability, and parents' satisfaction of SPACE-FTL. The investigators hypothesize that parents will rate SPACE-FTL as highly acceptable and that adherence will be above 70%.