A Male Caregiver Adaptation Study of the Connecting and Reflecting Experience Parenting Program
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: Connecting and Reflecting Experience (CARE) Program.
- Who it may be relevant to
- Registry conditions: Parenting Stress, Parent Child Relationship, Father-Child Relations, Emotional Regulation. Basic parameters: from 18 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
- United States
- 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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Overview
Male caregivers play a critical role in children's emotional development, yet they are often underrepresented in parenting interventions and may experience unique barriers to emotional engagement and support. This study will evaluate whether a 12-session parenting group therapy program is feasible, acceptable, and appropriate for male-identifying caregivers of children and adolescents receiving mental health services. The intervention being studied is the Connecting and Reflecting Experience (CARE) parenting program, a mentalizing-focused group therapy designed to strengthen caregivers' ability to reflect on their own and their child's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. CARE has demonstrated promise in improving parental reflective functioning, reducing parenting stress, and enhancing parent-child relationships in prior studies, but has not yet been evaluated in a group composed exclusively of male-identifying caregivers. Participants will take part in a 12-session weekly CARE group delivered via telehealth, with each session lasting one hour. Participants will also be asked to complete brief self-report surveys before, during, and after participation in the group. The purpose of the study is to inform future intervention development and determine whether CARE is a useful intervention for groups of male caregivers.
Interventions
- Behavioral Connecting and Reflecting Experience (CARE) Program
The intervention consists of weekly one-hour mentalizing-focused parenting group sessions with up to seven male-identifying caregivers per group and one to two trained facilitators. CARE is a therapy focused on parents' reflective capacity, or the ability to consider how our own and our children's thoughts, feelings, intentions, and other mental states shape behavior and parent-child relationships.
Primary outcome measures
- Change from Baseline to Post-Treatment in Parenting Stress [Time frame: The PSI-SF will be administered at baseline (approximately 0-2 weeks pre-treatment) and at post-treatment (after completion of Session 12, approximately 15 weeks after baseline measurement).]
- Change from Baseline to Post-Treatment in Parental Reflective Functioning [Time frame: The PRFQ will be administered at baseline (approximately 0-2 weeks pre-intervention) and at post-intervention (after completion of Session 12, approximately 15 weeks after baseline measurement).]
- Change from Baseline to Post-Treatment in Restrictive Emotionality [Time frame: The Restrictive Emotionality Subscale of the MRNI-R will be administered at baseline (approximately 0-2 weeks pre-treatment) and at post-treatment (after completion of Session 12, approximately 15 weeks after baseline measurement)]
- Change from First Session to Post-Treatment in Therapeutic Group Processes [Time frame: The TFI-19 will be administered after participants attend their first group session (approximately 0-2 weeks after baseline measurement) and again at post-treatment (after completion of Session 12, approximately 15 weeks after baseline measurement).]
- Post-Treatment Ratings of Feasibility [Time frame: This survey will be administered at post-treatment (i.e., after completion of Session 12, approximately 15 weeks after baseline measurement).]
- Post-Treatment Ratings of Acceptability [Time frame: This survey will be administered at post-treatment (i.e., after completion of Session 12, approximately 15 weeks after baseline measurement).]
- Post-Treatment Ratings of Appropriateness [Time frame: This survey will be administered at post-treatment (i.e., after completion of Session 12, approximately 15 weeks after baseline measurement).]
- Post-Treatment Ratings of Outcomes and Feedback [Time frame: This survey will be administered at post-treatment (i.e., after completion of Session 12, approximately 15 weeks after baseline measurement).]
- Post-Treatment Participant Group Attendance [Time frame: Time Frame: This survey will be administered at post-treatment (i.e., after completion of Session 12, approximately 15 weeks after baseline measurement).]
Eligibility criteria
Inclusion criteria
- Parents or primary caregivers who identify as male or identifies themself as having a male caregiving role (e.g., identifies as a father or "father figure")
- Caregiver of a child aged 0-17 years
- Child currently receiving psychiatric or behavioral health services within the Montefiore-Einstein Health System
- English-speaking
- Insurance accepted by Montefiore outpatient behavioral health services
Exclusion criteria
- Prior participation in a Connecting and Reflecting Experience (CARE) group
- Participation in another parenting-focused group or workshop within the past year
- Current episode of psychosis or mania, or active suicidal ideation requiring a higher level of care
- Serious psychiatric, neurocognitive, or substance-related difficulties requiring inpatient treatment or that would impede group participation, as determined by the PI or study clinician
- Limited English fluency
Criteria are shown verbatim from the registry (in English). Final eligibility is always assessed by the study center.
Healthy volunteers: Yes
Study design
- Allocation
- N/A
- Model
- Single group
- Masking
- Open label
- Primary purpose
- Treatment
Study locations
United States · 1 center
- Montefiore ACUTE Psychiatry — The Bronx
Publications
- Abidin, R. R. (2012). Parenting Stress Index (4th ed.) Short Form manual. PAR, Inc.
- Joyce, A. S., MacNair-Semands, R., Tasca, G. A., & Ogrodniczuk, J. S. (2011). Factor structure and validity of the Therapeutic Factors Inventory-Short Form. Group Dynamics: Theory, Research, and Practice, 15(3), 201.
- Levant, R. F., Smalley, K. B., Aupont, M., House, A. T., Richmond, K., & Noronha, D. (2007). Initial validation of the male role norms inventory-revised (MRNI-R). The Journal of men's Studies, 15(1), 83-100.
- Luyten P, Mayes LC, Nijssens L, Fonagy P. The parental reflective functioning questionnaire: Development and preliminary validation. PLoS One. 2017 May 4;12(5):e0176218. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0176218. eCollection 2017. PMID 28472162
- Weiner BJ, Lewis CC, Stanick C, Powell BJ, Dorsey CN, Clary AS, Boynton MH, Halko H. Psychometric assessment of three newly developed implementation outcome measures. Implement Sci. 2017 Aug 29;12(1):108. doi: 10.1186/s13012-017-0635-3. PMID 28851459
Identifiers
NCT: NCT07419308 · 2025-17454