Pai.ACT Programme for Parents of Children With Special Healthcare Needs - Phase I
For patients and families
In plain language
An automatic summary of structured registry data. It is an orientation aid, not a substitute for the official protocol or a physician assessment.
- What is being studied
- The protocol lists: Focused Acceptance and Commitment Therapy.
- Who it may be relevant to
- Registry conditions: Neurodevelopmental Disorders, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Autism Spectrum Disorder, Development Delay. Basic parameters: from 21 years · All.
- What needs checking
- Age, condition and sex are only basic indicators. Prior treatment, laboratory values and other mandatory requirements appear in the eligibility criteria below.
- Where it takes place
- Hong Kong
- Next step
- Save the trial, show it to the treating physician, and confirm current recruitment with the study center. Costs, documents and travel →
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Official title
Pai.ACT: A Deep-Learning Mental Health Advisory System Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Parents of Children With Special Healthcare Needs (Phase I)
Overview
This study aims to determine the feasibility, acceptability and potential efficacy of an individual, video-conferencing based Focused Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (FACT) on the mental well-being of parents of children with Special Health Care Needs(SHCN). The study also aims to explore the experience of parents after participating in the individual-based FACT sessions offered by the trained FACT interventionists.
Detailed description
Parents of children with Special Health Care Needs (SHCN) have always been under tremendous pressure to care for their children. They have been experiencing significant caregiving difficulties, such as scheduling and accompanying multiple follow-ups for rehabilitation and functional recovery and managing the child's symptoms and problematic behaviours. With the strike of COVID-19, these parents' stress may even be exacerbated due to the lockdown measures. Children's needs become more demanding with the suspension of the usual care services. Parenting stress has been known to affect parent-child interactions and increase negative parenting behaviours such as harsh, permissive or neglecting parenting impairing the parent's capacity to respond to the demands of the child's illness, which may, in turn, exacerbate the child's health problem and well-being. Recent evidence has advocated the efficacy of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) on mental health in different population groups, including healthy individuals, parents, children and those with mental health problems. To increase the reach of ACT and overcome the plausible disruptions of mental health services arising from the pandemic, the study proposes to use an innovative intervention approach, that is a brief version of ACT (Focused ACT), delivered by trained FACT interventionists in individual-based, video-conferencing format. The conversation data between the parent and the interventionist will be further analyzed for developing a Deep-Learning Mental Health Advisory System in the second phase of the Pai.ACT project. This study aims to determine the feasibility, acceptability and potential efficacy of an individual, video-conferencing-based Focused Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (FACT) on the mental well-being of parents of children with Special Health Care Needs(SHCN). The study also aims to explore the experience of parents after participating in the individual-based FACT sessions offered by the trained FACT interventionists.
Interventions
- Behavioral Focused Acceptance and Commitment Therapy
This is an individual-based FACT counselling programme which composes of 4-6 sessions on a weekly basis (45-60mins/session). All the sessions are delivered by a trained FACT interventionist via either video-conferencing (e.g., Zoom or Windows Teams) or face-to-face format. The programme aims to increase the psychological flexibility of the parent, so that he/she is able to (i) experience the present moment and take perspective on self (i.e., Awareness); (ii) detach the distressing private experi
Primary outcome measures
- Parental depressive symptoms [Time frame: Change from baseline assessment to immediate post-assessment]
- Parental anxiety symptoms [Time frame: Change from baseline assessment to immediate post-assessment]
- Parental Stress [Time frame: Change from baseline assessment to immediate post-assessment]
Secondary outcome measures (1)
- Parental Psychological Flexibility [Time frame: Change from baseline assessment to immediate post-assessment]
Eligibility criteria
Inclusion criteria
- Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong residents
- living together with the child who is at preschool/school-age (3-9 years old)
- adopt the responsibility of taking care of the child,
- has daily access to their iPhone and Android smartphones.
In addition, potential eligible parents who respond "yes" to any of the five validated screening questions in the Children with Special Health Care Needs (SHCN) Screener (see https://www.childhealthdata.org/docs/cshcn/technical-summary-of-cshcn-screener.pdf) will then be asked the associated follow-up questions to determine whether the child possesses physical, neurodevelopmental/emotional problem(s) that has lasted for at least 12 months. Only children with a positive response(s) to ≥ 1 item in each of the associated follow-up questions will be classified as children with SHCN.
Exclusion criteria
- Parents with severe mental illness or developmental disabilities which impaired their ability to comprehend the content of the programme will be excluded.
Criteria are shown verbatim from the registry (in English). Final eligibility is always assessed by the study center.
Healthy volunteers: No
Study design
- Allocation
- N/A
- Model
- Single group
- Masking
- Open label
- Primary purpose
- Treatment
Study locations
Hong Kong · 5 centers
- Hong Kong Christian Service — Hong Kong
- Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups — Hong Kong
- Hong Kong School Nurse Association — Hong Kong
- Hong Kong Young Women's Christian Association — Hong Kong
- Yang Memorial Methodist Social Service — Hong Kong
Identifiers
NCT: NCT05584059 · ITB/FBL/6033/21/P