Parent-training programs for improving maternal psychosocial health

Parents and their teenager meet with a mental health professional to come up with solutions for problem behavior. They develop targets, such as better grades in school, so that the teen can be rewarded with things that they enjoy doing, such as being able to go out with friends. Using the skills learned in BPT takes a lot of hard work, but parents who use what they have learned regularly will see better behavior in their children.

They will also see improved relationship with parents and siblings. As a parent, it is important to learn all you can about ADHD. This program teaches the following about ADHD:. Selection criteria: Only randomised controlled trials were included in which participants had been randomly allocated to an experimental and a control group, the latter being either a waiting-list, no-treatment or a placebo control group.

Studies had to include at least one group-based parenting programme, and one standardised instrument measuring maternal psychosocial health.

Data collection and analysis: A systematic critical appraisal of all included studies was undertaken using a modified version of the Journal of the American Medical Association JAMA published criteria. The treatment effect for each outcome in each study was standardised by dividing the mean difference in post-intervention scores for the intervention and treatment group, by the pooled standard deviation, to produce an effect size.

Main results: A total of 23 studies were included in the review but only 17 provided sufficient data to calculate effect sizes. The 17 studies provided a total of 59 assessments of outcome on a range of aspects of psychosocial functioning including depression, anxiety, stress, self-esteem, social competence, social support, guilt, mood, automatic thoughts, dyadic adjustment, psychiatric morbidity, irrationality, anger and aggression, mood, attitude, personality, and beliefs.

Because there were no individual data available in the primary studies concerning the level of pathology present at the onset, the review cannot help readers to determine which programmes are helpful for which mothers. Any methodological limitations of the review result primarily from the quality of the research evidence.

There are several cautions when applying the results of this review to a particular setting. Firstly, the study programmes focused on mothers with unknown and probably varying levels of pathology, as the authors acknowledge. Secondly, the programmes included mothers of children of all ages from infants to adolescents.

It is possible that different strategies may be necessary for parents of different aged children. Thirdly, some studies included children from the community and others from clinical settings where they were being treated for diagnosed behaviour disorders. Again, there may be a relation between the presence and severity of child disorders and maternal psychosocial health.

This relation could have an effect on programme outcomes. A single study has suggested that parenting groups can be cost effective 1 ; however, better quality research is required to determine which programmes are effective and which mothers benefit most.

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