Mindful Parenting Group Intervention for Parents of Children with Anxiety Disorders

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Farley, Robyn
de Diaz, Natalja A Nabinger
Emerson, Lisa Marie
Simcock, Gabrielle
Donovan, Caroline
Farrell, Lara J
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2023
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Abstract

Parenting behaviour and rearing style contribute to the intergenerational relationship between parental and child anxiety. Current psychological interventions for child anxiety typically do not adequately address parental mental health, parenting behaviours or the parent–child relationship. The current pilot study examines the effectiveness of a mindful parenting intervention (MPI) for parents of young children with clinical anxiety. It was hypothesised that the intervention would be associated with improvements in parental stress, mental health, and mindfulness, and a reduction in child clinical anxiety symptoms. Twenty-one parents of children aged 3–7 years diagnosed with anxiety disorders participated in an 8-week group MPI program that aimed to increase their intentional moment to moment awareness of the parent–child relationship. Parental (anxiety, depression, hostility, stress, burden, mindfulness, mindful parenting) and child (anxiety diagnoses, anxiety severity, comorbidities) outcomes were assessed at pre- and post-intervention, and at 3-month follow-up. Parents reported a significant increase in mindful parenting and a significant reduction in parent–child dysfunctional interaction, but no change in mental health symptoms. There was a significant reduction in parent-rated child anxiety symptoms, severity of child anxiety diagnosis and number of comorbid diagnoses at post and 3-month follow-up. Limitations include a lack of waitlist control, small sample size, and participants were largely mothers, from intact families and highly educated. There was attrition of 43% and outcomes were predominantly self-report. MPIs offer a novel and potentially effective method of increasing mindful parenting, decreasing dysfunctional parent–child interactions, reducing parenting stress and might also be an effective early intervention for indirectly decreasing young children’s clinical anxiety symptoms. Larger-scale controlled trials of MPIs are needed.

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Child Psychiatry & Human Development

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© The Author(s) 2023, corrected publication 2023. Open Access. This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.

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Clinical sciences

Applied and developmental psychology

Clinical and health psychology

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Science & Technology

Life Sciences & Biomedicine

Psychology, Developmental

Pediatrics

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Farley, R; de Diaz, NAN; Emerson, LM; Simcock, G; Donovan, C; Farrell, LJ, Mindful Parenting Group Intervention for Parents of Children with Anxiety Disorders, Child Psychiatry & Human Development, 2023