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Randomized Clinical Trial of Mindfulness Skills Augmentation in Parent Training

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Abstract

Background

The development of mindfulness parenting programs in recent years offers a promising direction for targeting parental emotional dysregulation in families of children with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Nevertheless, research on the effectiveness of mindfulness parenting programs is limited, and little is known about the contribution of mindfulness skills to parenting when integrated with parent training (PT).

Objective

The present study evaluated a mindfulness skills augmentation to PT for ADHD. We hypothesized that mindfulness-enhanced PT would improve parental emotion regulation and reduce hostile and coercive parenting.

Method

We developed a 90-min mindfulness skills protocol and integrated it with a nonviolent resistance (NVR) PT program addressing ADHD and behavior difficulties. A total of 79 families were randomly assigned to PT or mindfulness-enhanced PT. Forty-three families completed intervention. We used multilevel modeling to evaluate parental emotion regulation, hostile and coercive parenting, and child behavioral symptoms across treatments and over time.

Results

Across treatment conditions, mothers’ negative feelings, escalating behaviors, and capacity for emotion regulation improved significantly following treatment. Fathers in the mindfulness condition reported greater improvement in the capacity for emotion regulation, reduced negative feelings, and reduced parental submission compared with fathers in the PT condition. We found no differences in child externalizing symptoms, which decreased significantly in both groups.

Conclusions

Study results suggest that PT in NVR is effective in improving maternal capacity for emotion regulation and in reducing hostile and coercive parenting. For fathers, a mindfulness-based skills augmentation may be important for enhancing treatment benefits.

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Notes

  1. The first author’s prior experience with mindfulness involved the study and practice of mindful meditation, training in mindfulness at the school setting and administration of mindfulness groups with adolescents.

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Acknowledgements

We would like to thank the therapists at the Clinic for Systems Based Treatment for ADHD at Schneider Children Hospital for their important contribution to the development of the mindfulness protocol and for their enthusiasm to implement it in their work. We are also thankful to Michael Partas and Eyal Ronen Ackerman for their help with data collection and data analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Education, The Hebrew University, Mount Scopus, 91905, Jerusalem, Israel

    Naama Gershy

  2. Department of Psychology, LIU Brooklyn, 1 University Plaza, Brooklyn, NY, 11201, USA

    Kevin B. Meehan & Nicholas Papouchis

  3. Department of Psychology, Tel Aviv University, Ramat Aviv, 69978, Tel Aviv, Israel

    Haim Omer & Irit Schorr Sapir

  4. Schneider Children’s Medical Center of Israel, Kaplan St 14, 492023, Petah Tikva, Israel

    Irit Schorr Sapir

Authors
  1. Naama Gershy
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  2. Kevin B. Meehan
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  3. Haim Omer
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  4. Nicholas Papouchis
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  5. Irit Schorr Sapir
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Correspondence to Naama Gershy.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Ethical Approval

All procedures performed in this study were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Informed Consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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Gershy, N., Meehan, K.B., Omer, H. et al. Randomized Clinical Trial of Mindfulness Skills Augmentation in Parent Training. Child Youth Care Forum 46, 783–803 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10566-017-9411-4

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