Preventing anxiety in the children of anxious parents - feasibility of a brief, online, group intervention for parents of one- to three-year-olds

Intervention for school anxiety and absenteeism in children (ISAAC): Co-designing a brief parent-focused intervention for emotionally-based school avoidance

Emotionally-based school avoidance (EBSA) is an important driver of persistent school absenteeism and may have worsened in the context of COVID-19. This paper describes the development of a brief parent-focused psychosocial intervention with the goal to address the lack of accessible early interventions for EBSA. The developmental process used a person-based approach with two phases. In Phase 1, qualitative data were collected about intervention preferences and priorities from N = 10 parents and N = 7 practitioners in a series of co-design workshops. Phase 2 refined an intervention blueprint based on iterative consultations with N = 4 parents and N = 3 practitioners. Framework analysis was used to organise findings around key intervention parameters, including relevant mechanisms, content, and delivery methods needed to provide effective, acceptable and feasible support for families affected by EBSA. The resulting blueprint incorporates three online modules to be delivered over three weeks with each module consisting of psychoeducational videos, self-completed learning tasks and a corresponding coaching session. Respective module content includes: (i) self-care strategies to increase parent wellbeing and self-efficacy; (ii) parenting strategies to change behavioural patterns that maintain child distress and avoidance of school; and (iii) strategic communication strategies to increase the quality of home-school relationships. The blueprint has been developed into a full prototype for a forthcoming feasibility study.

Parental and Adolescents' Anxiety during the COVID-19 Outbreak in Rural China: The role of Parent-child Communication

Purpose

It has been suggested that the intergenerational transmission of anxiety may be an important contributor to the high prevalence of anxiety in adolescents. The objectives of this study are to examine whether and how parental anxiety is related to adolescent's anxiety and to explore the associations of parental anxiety and parent-child communication with adolescents' anxiety across different grades.

Methods

The current survey was conducted online from February 8th to February 27th, 2020.The questionnaires were distributed and retrieved through a web-based platform. A total of 6196 Chinese rural adolescents from grade seven to twelve (age ranging from 11 to 18 years old) were included.

Results

In this study, parental anxiety was significantly associated with higher adolescent anxiety (β = 0.14, p < 0.001) and this association was statically strongest at grade twelve. Besides, children with problematic parent-child communication related to COVID-19 reported elevated anxiety (β = 0.05, p < 0.01). In contrast, effective parent-child communication about COVID-19 mitigated the level of anxiety transmitted from parent to child (β = -0.04, p < 0.05).

Conclusions

During the COVID-19 epidemic, parents' anxiety was related to adolescents' anxiety. In addition, parent-child communication plays a moderating role in the above relationship. These findings emphasize the importance of implementing more psycho-education programs that specifically target parents' emotion regulation and effective communication abilities to ameliorate the psychopathological symptoms of parents and their children.

Supplementary Information

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40653-023-00609-y.

Development of an intervention to support parents receiving treatment in psychiatric inpatient hospital using participatory design methods

Introduction

When parents of dependent children are treated in psychiatric inpatient hospital, it typically involves separation of parent and child for the duration of treatment, which can be highly distressing to the dyad and can result in disruption to the parent-child relationship. Parents who have experienced hospitalisation have expressed a desire for their parenting identity to be recognized and appropriately engaged with during their treatment. This recognition includes provision of interventions which support them as parents to limit the impact of their mental health on their children. The current study, the first of its kind known to have taken place, details a collaborative intervention development project for parents receiving inpatient care.

Methods

The current study, the first of its kind known to have taken place, details a collaborative intervention development project for parents receiving inpatient care. This project involved the adaptation and extension of a prior parenting-focused course for parents high in anxiety to meet the needs of parents being treated in inpatient settings. In the first two stages of the three-phase project, patients, carers and mental health practitioners contributed to the revision and delivery plan for the course including developing new content for the intervention. In the final stage, which took the form of a participatory evaluation, the intervention was delivered to 11 parents receiving inpatient treatment who then provided extensive feedback. A series of iterative adaptations to the intervention were made in response to this feedback alongside stakeholder input.

Results

The final intervention comprises five modules focused on exploring the experience of parents alongside specific learning and skills orientated toward boosting their connection with their children during hospitalisation and in readiness for discharge. Preliminary feedback from patients and ward staff has been positive and the process of delivering the project on inpatient wards was associated with no increase in negative clinical outcomes.

Discussion

The successful development of a targeted intervention within inpatient psychiatric units offers a signal that parents treated in this setting welcome the opportunity to be supported in their parenting role. As the first known UK intervention of its kind to be developed in partnership with patients, ward staff and management, it is specifically tailored to the context and needs of this group with the potential to be delivered by a range of health professionals in this setting.

Editorial: Control alt delete - technology and children's mental health

With international contributions from Denmark, Peru, Italy, Turkey, Estonia, Russia, Canada, the USA, Australia and the UK, this special issue offers insights and evidence about the technology's ability to act as a force of good and a source of harm for young people's mental health. As we better understand the complex and bidirectional relationship between technology and mental health, we need to move beyond dichotomous narratives about it being good or bad; it is both, depending on how it is used. Collective responsibility across technology companies, researchers, public services and community organisations, parents and the young people themselves can make a difference in the way technology is used to protect and improve mental health.