FAB Programme for Parents of Children With NDD
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: Facilitator-guided Acceptance and Commitment Bibliotherapy (FAB), General Parenting Education and Advice.
- Who it may be relevant to
- Registry conditions: Autism Spectrum Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Neurodevelopmental Disorders, Intellectual Disability. 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
Facilitator-guided Acceptance and Commitment Bibliotherapy for Parents of Young Children With Neurodevelopmental Disorders: A Randomised Controlled Trial
Overview
The study aims to examine the effectiveness of a psychotherapy approach called Facilitator-guided Acceptance and Commitment Bibliotherapy (FAB) in improving the psychological health of parents of young children with neurodevelopmental disorders (NDD) and reducing the emotional and behavioral symptoms of NDD children. The study will involve 154 Cantonese-speaking parents of children aged 2-6 years diagnosed with NDD in Hong Kong. The study hopes to find that FAB can improve parent-child dyads' health outcomes by enhancing psychological flexibility, parental psychological health, and mindful parenting skills.
Detailed description
Background: Neurodevelopmental disorders (NDDs) are heterogeneous disorders that typically develop in early childhood and are characterised by developmental deficits that result in impaired personal, social, and/or occupational functioning. In Hong Kong, according to the latest statistical report from the Education Bureau, it is estimated that at least 71,320 preschool and school-age children have been diagnosed with NDD and are currently receiving special education and/or health care services. It is well documented that NDD children have less clear communication signals to their parents and poorer prosocial skills.
Continued failures and difficulties in understanding and responding to children's needs may prevent parents from developing positive parenting behaviours, which can negatively impact parents' psychology and ultimately snowballing their NDD child's emotional and behavioural symptoms. To our knowledge, effective interventions that specifically target the mental health of parents caring for young children with NDD to improve outcomes for both parents and children are extremely scarce. To address this study gap, this study will implement and examine the effectiveness of the Facilitator-guided Acceptance and Commitment Bibliotherapy, a facilitator-guided manual reading psychotherapy approach that explicitly targets the psychological needs of parents, in parents of young children with NDD in On-site Pre-school Rehabilitation Service (OPRS) teams.
Objectives: To examine the effectiveness of the Facilitator-guided Acceptance and Commitment Bibliotherapy (FAB) and general parenting advice, in comparison to the control (general parenting advice only), on outcomes related to parental psychological health (parenting stress, symptoms of depression and anxiety, psychological flexibility), parenting behaviour, as well as the child's emotional and behavioural symptoms over 6 months of post-intervention period.
Hypotheses to be tested: Compared to the control group alone, FAB participation could achieve the following goals: reduce parents' parenting stress and NDD children's emotional and behavioural symptoms, reduce parental depressive and anxiety symptoms, improve psychological flexibility and nurturing behaviours of mindful parenting, and reduce the use of health care and rehabilitation services for young children with NDD over 6 months of post-intervention period.
Design: A multi-centre, two-arm randomised controlled trial (RCT) with a repeated-measures parallel-group design
Subjects: 154 Cantonese-speaking parents of children aged 2-6 years diagnosed with neurodevelopmental disorders
Instruments: Validated questionnaires
Interventions: Facilitator-guided Acceptance and Commitment Bibliotherapy (FAB)
Main outcome measures: parental psychological health outcomes and the child's emotional and behavioural symptoms
Data analysis: Generalised estimating equation analyses with covariates adjustments
Expected results: After participating in FAB, parents will become more psychologically flexible in caring for their children with NDD. Parents also acquire better psychological health and mindful parenting skills, leading to eventful improvements in parent-child dyads health outcomes.
Interventions
- Behavioral Facilitator-guided Acceptance and Commitment Bibliotherapy (FAB)
The Facilitator-guided Acceptance and Commitment Bibliotherapy (FAB) is a 12-week self-help parenting program that integrates Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) principles with web-based modules and group-based sessions. The program includes a self-help workbook/manual and ACT protocols that cover various self-help exercises such as guided imagery, grounding, mindfulness, and values clarifications. To make the programme more relatable to Hong Kong parents caring for children with NDD, story - Behavioral General Parenting Education and Advice
Both the FAB group and the Control Group will receive routine family support services from collaborating NGOs, including education on managing the emotional and behavioral symptoms of children with NDD. To control for the interaction/social effect present in the FAB group, the Control Group will also receive four video-conferencing sessions guided by a trained research assistant over 12 weeks. These sessions will facilitate parents to discuss their parenting challenges, identify parenting traps,
Primary outcome measures
- Parenting stress [Time frame: Change from baseline assessment to immediate and 6 months post-intervention]
- Child's emotional and behavioural symptoms [Time frame: Change from baseline assessment to immediate and 6 months post-intervention]
Secondary outcome measures (4)
- Parental symptoms of anxiety and depression [Time frame: Change from baseline assessment to immediate and 6 months post-intervention]
- Parental psychological flexibility [Time frame: Change from baseline assessment to immediate and 6 months post-intervention]
- Parenting behaviour [Time frame: Change from baseline assessment to immediate and 6 months post-intervention]
- Child's use of health care and rehabilitation services [Time frame: Change from baseline assessment to immediate and 6 months post-intervention]
Eligibility criteria
Parents of young children with NDD who fulfil the following criteria will be recruited:
- Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong residents,
- aged ≥ 21 years,
- have a child aged between two and six years old (preschool age) with a clinically documented diagnosis/suspected NDD diagnosis according to DSM-5 criteria (e.g., ASD, ADHD, developmental delay) and enrolled in the SWD subvented pre-school rehabilitation services offered by NGOs,
- caregivers who adopted the responsibility of taking care of the child, living together with the child, and
- have device(s) with internet access.
Parents of young children with NDD will be excluded if:
- has been diagnosed with severe mental illness(es),
- cognitive/language/communication/visual/hearing impairment(s) or disorders that may present difficulties in comprehending the content of the intervention; and/or
- are currently receiving another psychosocial, psychoeducational, or parenting intervention(s).
Criteria are shown verbatim from the registry (in English). Final eligibility is always assessed by the study center.
Healthy volunteers: No
Study design
- Allocation
- Randomized
- Model
- Parallel assignment
- Masking
- Triple blind
- Primary purpose
- Treatment
Study locations
Hong Kong · 2 centers
- Hong Kong Sheng Kung Hui Welfare Council Limited — Hong Kong
- The Chinese University of Hong Kong — Shatin
Identifiers
NCT: NCT05872737 · NTEC-2022-0091