Transgenerational association of mentalization with child mental health: A scoping review

This scoping review provides an overview of empirical research concerning the association between parents' mentalization and child mental health (0-12 years of age). Specifically, it aims at synthesizing the evidence regarding to what extent mentalization (a) is a protective factor for child mental health, and (b) moderates the transgenerational transmission of psychopathology. A total of 73 studies were selected out of 5112 identified (duplicates excluded). The results hint at a relation between parent's mentalization and child mental health: 88% of the studies showed significant associations between predictor and outcome dimensions across a variety of samples, research procedures, and assessment measures. About the direction of the associations, almost all of them behave as expected, supporting the statement that children of parents with healthy mentalization skills tend to have better functioning and show less psychopathology. The evidence indicates that parents' healthy mentalization strengthens children's well-being and helps them cope with stressors more effectively so it is acting as a protective factor against mental health problems. Eleven studies found moderating roles of parents' mentalization in the transgenerational transmission of psychopathology. In a context where mental ill-health is mostly addressed only once there is a problem, these results suggest that fostering parents' mentalization in clinical but also in non-clinical settings could help to improve child mental health in terms of symptoms, functioning, and well-being, and stop the growing incidence of mental disorders across development.