Group interventions for adolescents with divorced parents: A systematic literature review

The aim of this study is to systematically review the group interventions applied to support the mental health of adolescents whose parents are divorced and to synthesise the findings derived from studies involving group interventions. A systematic literature review method was utilised to examine and bring together the available evidence. Seven databases including EBSCOHOST (including all databases such as Academic Search Ultimate, ERIC, MEDLINE), Pubmed, SAGE, Science Direct, Scopus, Web of Science and WILEY were searched using the keywords determined within the scope of the research. Experimental studies involving group interventions applied to adolescents with divorced parents, published in peer-reviewed journals in English language between 2014-2024, and in which data were collected with measurement tools, were determined as the inclusion criteria of the study. Seven studies that met the inclusion criteria defined the scope of this study. In the included studies, the effectiveness of Optimism Group Therapy, Spirituality-Based Group Counselling, Children of Divorce - Coping with Divorce (CoD-CoD), Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy for Children (MBCT-C), The Adolescent Adjustment Pilot Program to Parental Divorce (AAPPD), Meta-Cognitive Therapy (MCT) and Emotion-Focused Therapy (EFT) interventions were tested. These interventions were found to be effective in cases of depression, anxiety and stress symptoms, anger, mental health problems, preventing the decrease in the level of positive affect, coping, social emotional competence; whereas they had no effect on negative affect. The findings obtained from the study and discussed in the light of the literature, suggestions were made.