Giving Compass' Take:

• The Atlantic reports that mental health treatment can have ripple effects in families — specifically, when teens receive counseling and therapy, their parents may feel some benefits.

• Studies like this one only reinforce how important it is to ramp up mental health outreach and resources for young people. How can nonprofits make sure teens struggling with mental health get the help they need?

• Here's how teens themselves are redefining the conversation around depression.

I spent a lot of time in therapy as a kid, for depression, among other things. On and off until I graduated high school, I’d “hang out” in the doctor’s office, playing Connect Four before begrudgingly consenting to more intense discussions. The effect of these sessions was undoubtedly helpful for me. But one thing my self-involved teen brain never considered was that the treatment could improve my parents’ mental health as well.

Preliminary new research, presented at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association [recently], suggests that it did: When depressed teens go through some version of mental-health treatment, symptoms of depression in their parents lessen. The finding, based on a study of 325 American teens and their parents, points to what might seem obvious in hindsight: Happier kids make for happier parents. It builds upon earlier research showing how mental health can be relational, hinting that mental-health care benefits not just individuals and their family members, but their entire communities ...

Few studies, however, have looked at how a child might affect their parent’s own mental health. Kelsey Howard, a doctoral candidate at Northwestern University and a co-author of the new research, says she suspects that’s because most of the research done so far has been concerned primarily with the treatment methods themselves, not on the effects of treatment on people’s relationships.

Read the full article about teens' depression and their parents by Angela Lashbrook at The Atlantic.