NCT03807336

Clinical Trial of Emotion-Focused Skills Training for Parents

Completed NA Last updated 3 August 2022

What this trial tests

NA trial testing Emotion-Focused Skills Training for Parents - Experiential in F01.318 Child Rearing in 220 participants. Completed in 30 January 2021.

Timeline

1 October 2018

Primary endpoint
30 July 2020

30 January 2021

Quick facts

Lead sponsor	Institutt for Psykologisk Radgivning
Phase	NA
Status	Completed
Study type	INTERVENTIONAL
Allocation	randomized
Design	parallel
Masking	single
Primary purpose	treatment
Enrollment	220
Start date	1 October 2018
Primary completion	30 July 2020
Estimated completion	30 January 2021
Sites	1 location across Norway

Drugs / interventions tested

• Emotion-Focused Skills Training for Parents - Experiential
• Emotion-Focused Skills Training for Parents - Psychoeducational

Conditions studied

• F01.318 Child Rearing — all drugs for F01.318 Child Rearing →
• F01.470 Emotions — all drugs for F01.470 Emotions →
• F01.145.179 Child Behavior — all drugs for F01.145.179 Child Behavior →

Sponsor

Institutt for Psykologisk Radgivning

Who can join

Adults 6 to 13, any sex, with F01.318 Child Rearing or F01.470 Emotions. Patients with the condition only — healthy volunteers not accepted.

Sponsor's own description

Children with externalizing and internalizing symptoms has been linked to poor emotional competence, problematic understanding and regulation of emotions. A number of recent studies demonstrates the importance of parents' active involvement in the child's recovery process and support the empirical relationship between parenting style and child symptoms. Emotional awareness and acceptance of painful emotional experience in parents leads to reduction in how these emotions are experienced in response to stressors in children. This makes the parent less vulnerable to rumination or suppression of negative emotional experience related to the child. In addition, it releases parents' emotional capacity to be mentally present and emotionally available for their child. Although neuro-affective principles from research have been incorporated in the therapeutic approaches for adults, there are currently no programs that target these mechanisms in working with children with mental health difficulties. Emotion Focused Skills Training (EFST) is an easily administrated, cost efficient treatment program specifically directed towards the parental role in promoting change in children. In this randomized controlled trial, we will compare experiential process oriented EFST with a psycho-educational version of EFST on parents of children aged 6-13 with externalizing or internalizing symptoms. Parents of 236 children will receive a two days course and 6 hours of individually delivered treatment within a 10 weeks period, either with the experiential version of EFST or the psycho-educational version. Feedback regarding outcome on externalizing and internalizing problems will be obtained from parents and teachers at 5 different periods: baseline, treatment completion and at 3, 6 and 9 months follow-up.

Publications & conference data

1 peer-reviewed publication reference this trial (live from Europe PMC):

1. The effects of emotion-focused skills training on parental mental health, emotion regulation and self-efficacy: Mediating processes between parents and children.
   Ansar N, Nissen Lie HA, Stiegler JR. · · 2024 · cited 9× · PMID 37311111 · DOI 10.1080/10503307.2023.2218539