198 Chapter 7 confirm the reliability of these findings, especially at the level of the brain. In order to mitigate the replicability crisis, it remains important to join our forces to publicly share data and study designs with other labs. This would generate accountable knowledge at a faster pace and accelerates scientific breakthroughs. Lastly, despite the fact that participation to the study was open for all depressed adolescents and their parents seeking treatment in one of the participating mental health facilities, the inclusion of participating families may have suffered from selection bias. Parents and adolescents that are not on speaking terms with each other were most likely not willing to participate in our study. In addition, practitioners might not have introduced the study to depressed adolescents and their parents for whom, in their opinion, the study would be too demanding or would potentially interfere with the psychotherapy that was offered. As such, one must keep in mind that our findings in the context of adolescent depression might at least apply to families that were at the same page with each other and were open for treatment and scientific research. Moreover, this might have rather led to an underestimation than an overestimation of the effects for this sample, as parent-child dyads with a worse relationship quality are expected to have more difficulties connecting with each other. CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS Depressed adolescents seem to experience eye contact as less positive and less socially satisfying, and do not benefit from its mood-boosting effect (Chapter 4). This corroborates with the feeling of parents not being able to get through to their depressed adolescent, which makes it difficult for parents to offer (emotional) support. In addition to addressing interpersonal difficulties in depressed adolescents, e.g., with interpersonal psychotherapy, it can be helpful to focus also on parents. Psychoeducation for parents focusing on the depressed adolescent’s difficulties in the interpersonal domain may foster a better understanding of the challenges depressed adolescents are facing and provide them with tools to break the negative spiral of getting alienated from each other. Recently, such a program has been developed for parents of depressed adolescents in the Netherlands: Samen Sterk, where parents are provided with tools to help (re-)establish or strengthen the bond with the child (Elzinga et al., 2022). Another result that might have the potential to be implemented in the clinical field is the use of eye gazing into one’s own eyes in a therapeutic session (e.g., via a mirror) to elicit negative selfcognitions in people with negative self-views. Although this was studied in parents with a history of childhood emotional maltreatment in Chapter 3, this way of directly addressing one’s selfview can potentially be used in a broader context as negative cognitions about the self can be considered a transdiagnostic symptom of various psychiatric disorders, including adolescent
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