Emotion Focused Family Therapy for Parents of Children With Mental Health Difficulties
Trial statusRecruiting
Trial phaseNot applicable
Trial typeInterventional
Biological sexAll
Age7-15
SponsorUniversity of Guelph
About this trial
Emotion Focused Family Therapy (EFFT) is a promising intervention that aims to teach parents advanced skills to support their child's development of emotion skills and increase their adaptive behaviours, potentially leading to improvements in their child's psychological functioning and family functioning more broadly.
This randomized controlled trial (RCT; EFFT vs waitlist control) will (1) test the efficacy of a 6-week group EFFT program on parent and child outcomes and (2) examine maintenance of treatment gains up to four months post-intervention.
Eligibility criteria
This trial does not accept healthy volunteersQualifiers
Parent of child aged 7 to 15 years old with anxiety, depression, or behavioural challenges
Parent of child is willing to participate in intervention
Parent is living at home with the child
Disqualifiers
Parent or child not proficient enough in speaking/understanding English to complete measures or EFFT intervention components
Parent or child with a severe mental health disorder (e.g., active suicidality and psychosis) is not considered suitable for the trial intervention due to the clinical need for immediate intervention
Parent or child is actively receiving, or due to receive, intensive psychological intervention focused on cognitive and/or behavioural strategies to intervene with emotional or behavioural difficulties
Parent or child has any disabilities in language, speech or hearing that would interfere with their completion of the EFFT and measures
Trial design
Design model
Parallel
Treatments tested in this trial
Emotion Focused Family Therapy
BehavioralThe Emotion Focused Family Therapy (EFFT) intervention for this study will be delivered to groups of four to ten parents over six weekly sessions of two hours each. The goal of EFFT is to teach and empower parents to coach their child to process the emotions at the source of their mental health symptoms, to increase their child's adaptive behaviours, and to repair emotional injuries within the parent-child relationship. EFFT also targets parents' own emotional challenges that may prevent them from feeling capable or being able to support their child's treatment. Each EFFT session will include introductions, psychoeducation about emotion and psychopathology, introduction of skills, experiential activities (e.g., chair work), open discussion and feedback, and homework activities covering the foci of EFFT: emotion coaching, behaviour coaching, therapeutic apology, and parental emotion blocks.
Treatment groups
200 Participants
are divided into 2 treatment groupsGroup A: Waitlist (delayed intervention)No intervention 0 interventions
Group B: EFFT interventionExperimental treatment 1 intervention
Trial outcomes
Primary outcomes
1
Change in parental psychopathology symptoms at 6 weeks and 4 months
This outcome will be measured through the Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10), a 10-item self report measure of psychological symptoms that parents will complete. Parents will rate the extent to which they are affected by various psychopathology symptoms on a five-point Likert scale from 1 (None of the time) to 5 (All of the time), with greater total scores (range = 10-50) indicating more severe psychopathology.
Time frame
Change at 6 weeks; Change at 4 months2
Change in child psychopathology symptoms at 6 weeks and 4 months
This outcome will be measured through the Behavior and Feelings Survey (BFS), a 12-item measure of child psychopathology symptoms to be completed by both parents (parent-report) and children (youth-report). Parents and children will rate items on a five-point Likert scale from 0 (Not a problem) to 4 (A very big problem), with greater scores (Internalizing subscale range = 0-24; Externalizing subscale range = 0-24; Total score range = 0-48) indicating more severe psychopathology.
Time frame
Change at 6 weeks; Change at 4 months3
Change in parental emotion regulation at 6 weeks and 4 months
This outcome will be measured through the Difficulties in Emotion Regulation Scale (DERS), a 36-item self-report measure of emotion regulation difficulties to be completed by parents. Parents will indicate the frequency with which they experience difficulties with emotion regulation on a five-point Likert scale from 1 (Almost never) to 5 (Almost always), with greater total scores (range = 36-180) indicating greater difficulties with emotion regulation.
Time frame
Change at 6 weeks; Change at 4 months4
Change in child emotion regulation at 6 weeks and 4 months
This outcome will be measured through the Negative Emotionality subscale of the Child and Adolescent Dispositions Scale (CADS), a scale of child emotion regulation to be completed by parents (parent-report) and children (youth-report). Parents and children will rate the seven Negative Emotionality items on a four-point Likert scale from 1 (Not at all) to 4 (Very much/very often) with greater scores (range = 7-28) indicating poorer emotion regulation.
Time frame
Change at 6 weeks; Change at 4 monthsSecondary outcomes
1
Change in parental emotion socialization at 6 weeks and 4 months
This outcome will be measured through the Coping with Children's Negative Emotions Scale (CCNES), a 12-item self-report measure of parental emotion parenting practices in response to children's expression of negative emotion. Responses are divided into six subscales representing six distinct types of parental responses. The responses will be grouped in two overall scores: Supportive (Expressive Encouragement, Problem-Focused, and Emotion-Focused Reactions) and Unsupportive (Punitive, Minimizing, and Distress Reactions) practices. Parents will rate the likelihood that they would respond in these distinct ways on a seven-point Likert scale from 1 (Very unlikely) to 7 (Very likely), with greater overall scores (range = 1-7) indicating greater levels of each type of parental response.
Time frame
Change at 6 weeks; Change at 4 months2
Change in parental emotion blocks at 6 weeks and 4 months
This outcome will be measured through the Caregiver Traps Scale (CTS), a 14-item self-report measure of parental emotional blocks. Parents will rate each item on a seven-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (Not likely) to 7 (Extremely Likely), with higher total scores (range = 14-98) indicating greater levels of parental emotional blocks.
Time frame
Change at 6 weeks; Change at 4 months3
Change in parental self-efficacy at 6 weeks and 4 months
This outcome will be measured through the Me as a Parent Questionnaire (MaaP), a 16-item self-report measure of parental self-efficacy. Parents will rate the degree to which they agree with statements about their feelings of competence in their parent role on a five-point Likert scale from 1 (Strongly disagree) to 5 (Strongly agree), with greater total scores (range = 16-80) indicating greater parental self-efficacy.
Time frame
Change at 6 weeks; Change at 4 months4
Fidelity of EFFT program
This outcome will be measured via audiorecording of group sessions. Fidelity scores will be calculated based on content fidelity - i.e., The degree to which providers implemented the key EFFT components, including: behaviour coaching, emotion coaching, parental emotion blocks, therapeutic apology.
Time frame
Throughout intervention over 6 weeksSponsors and contacts
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Source ClinicalTrials.gov