Effectiveness of a parental intervention program for high anxious trait children

Abstract

In the literature, a well-known effective program in reducing children’s anxiety symptoms is the ‘Coping Cat’ program (Kendall, 1994). However, effectiveness studies of parental education program have been relatively limited. Parenting factors are important as the risk for anxiety disorders appears particularly high in the offspring of anxious parents (McClure, Brennan, Hammen, & Le Brocque, 2001). Further parenting styles such as over-involvement and criticism was found to play a significant role in the development and maintenance of childhood anxiety (Gar, & Hudson, 2008). Therefore, this study adopted the ‘Coping Cat’ treatment program and delivered exclusively to parents of 14 children with anxiety symptoms of ages 6-11. The intervention group consisted of 6 2-hours group sessions of 4 to 7 parents. Psychological questionnaires were administered to parents during pre and post treatment. The outcome measures were compared with another 14 parents who did not receive the parental education program. Self-reported questionnaires were administered, including Parenting Stress Scale (PSS), Alabama Parenting Questionnaire (APQ), Coping Self-Efficacy Scale (CSE 13), Brief COPE and Screen for Child Anxiety Related Disorders (SCARED), to assess parental stress, parental styles, parental stress-coping styles and indirect effect on children’s anxiety symptoms. Repeated-measures ANOVA and paired sample t-tests was computed to evaluate the effects of the parental program. Results suggested that the intervention group showed significantly reduction in parents and children’s levels of stress and anxiety symptoms. It also demonstrated significant decrease of child’s separation anxiety symptoms and school avoidance behaviours after intervention. Moreover, significant reduced level of negative parental practices and increased practices of positive stress-coping strategies were found at post-treatment. Furthermore, perceived efficacy in stopping unpleasant emotions and thoughts as well as getting support from friends and family had improved. Additionally, the reduced stress symptoms among participants in the intervention group were negatively correlated with the increased use of humour coping strategies. Likewise, the reduced level of anxiety symptoms at post-treatment was positively correlated with the reduced practices of negative and ineffective discipline.