Relations between parents’ psychological well-being and symptom severity of children with ADHD, and the effectiveness of video feedback intervention on children’s ADHD symptoms and parental psychological well-being

Abstract

Two studies are presented in this thesis proposal. In Study 1, we investigated the interrelations between parental psychological well-being, negative parenting practices, and intervention effectiveness for children with ADHD. This study involved about 71 students at local primary schools showing ADHD symptoms, their parents and teachers recruited from a large-scale project that provided school-based training to these students. We hypothesize that there is a relation between parents’ psychological well-being and treatment effectiveness of children with ADHD, and negative parenting mediates the relation between parental psychological distress and the treatment effectiveness for children with ADHD. Before and after treatment, the child’s ADHD-related difficulties, parents’ psychological well-being and parenting practices were assessed via questionnaires by both parents and teachers. Controlling for children age, children gender and school, parental mental health predicted child’s treatment effectiveness in terms of their hyperactivity. The relation between parental mental health and child treatment effectiveness in terms of the inattentiveness, hyperactivity, emotional symptoms and conduct problems of the child was mediated by change in parents’ negative parenting practices. In study 2, we examined the effectiveness of video feedback intervention for parents with children showing ADHD symptoms in enhancing parents’ psychological well-being and parenting practices, by comparing the effects of video feedback training (experimental group) with behavioural parenting training (active control group) among parents with ADHD children. Of the 47 subjects with complete data, 28 parents received the video feedback intervention and 19 parents received the behavioural parenting training (active control treatment). We hypothesize that the video feedback intervention will be effective in improving the psychological well-being of parents of children with ADHD and children of parents receiving the video feedback intervention will show a reduction in their ADHD symptoms when compared to children of parents in the active control group. Controlling for family income, there was a significant interaction effect on child’s inattentive behaviours between the experimental and active control groups across time. Also, a significant increase in parents’ positive involvement in their parenting practices was found for the experimental group. Direct observation and coding of participants’ behavioural and cognitive changes in the experimental group showed significant changes in the Positive Content, Change with video feedback intervention and Picture Future across training sessions. This research investigates the relation between parental psychological well-being and outcomes of treatment for children with ADHD and is the first to explore the use of video feedback intervention to enhance their parenting skills as well as their psychological well-being. Significant implications such as the inclusion of parent training as part of a comprehensive intervention plan for children with ADHD can be drawn from this research findings. A larger sample size, a randomised controlled trial experimental design, and evaluation of maintenance effect are needed to replicate the findings.