The Effectiveness of a Group Brief Parent Training for Parents with the Developmental Disorders

Background:  Various types of Parent Training (PT) have been developed as a family support program to meet the needs of parents who have children with developmental disabilities. However, practical challenges have been studied, such as contents, amount and length of the program varies among types of disabilities and needs of parents. Brief parent training program was expected to be effective for various needs, can address these problems.

Objectives:  The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of a shortened version of Tottori University-PT program (S-TPT) by analyzing variability of parents’ behavior and cognition, and child’s behavior.

Methods:  80 parents of children with intellectual/developmental disabilities were participated. The children were 4.11 years old on average and were provided therapy 2 to 8 times a month. The participants were divided into PT group (N=40; 31 boys and 9 girls) and controlled group (N=40; 33 boys and 7 girls). The PT group attends S-TPT, which were 5 sessions in one time a week for 5 weeks. S-TPT was performed in groups of 8-10 mothers/fathers each. The sessions consisted following: Reinforcement, the token economy system, three-term contingency, effective instruction, and antecedent control. Beck Depression Inventory-Second Edition (BDI-Ⅱ) , Parenting Stress Index (PSI) Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire(PSDQ) and Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory(ECBI) were used. These measures were given at pre- and post-program, and at 2-month follow up.

Results:  In PT group, there were improvements of all measurements. Effects on the PT group compared to the control group were tested with two-way factorial analysis of variance (ANOVA), using the pre- and posttest scores. There was a significant difference in the main effect and the interaction on PSI, PSDQ item “Rebuke”, and “Difficulty of the Corresponding".

Conclusions:  In comparison between controlled group and PT group, it suggested that shorter parent training give positive effect on stress of raising child and depression. And, both groups showed improvement over 2-month follow-up. We consider that the reasons might be that child of a parent who was in both groups was provided therapy. Further, as for the behavior variability of child, there was the improvement, but no significant difference between groups. We want to make clear that point in the future.