This paper describes a group treatment approach to helping parents of youth with Disruptive Behaviour Disorders. These youth have a significant negative and pervasive impact on their parents, who feel incompetent and guilty. Parents are helped to express their grief at their many losses in a safe, supportive and non-blaming group environment. They gain insight into the factors that make it difficult for them to set limits and they begin to change themselves rather than "fix" their child. Parent's hope and confidence grow as positive change becomes evident. As their sense of shame, guilt and fear lessen, parents are able to act more effectively with their youth and others. This paper delineates the clinical factors that contribute to parental effectiveness.
This paper describes the responses of parents to questionnaires filled out as part of a group therapy program for parents whose adolescents exhibit conduct problems and refuse interventions. A brief description of the youth, parents and the program is followed by representative examples of the comments parents made at their termination from the group about their experiences and what helped them or hindered them in dealing with their situations and emotions. Their responses are compared and contrasted with the responses to Irving Yalom's adult groups responses to a Q-sort, which rated aspects of their groups from most helpful to least helpful. Parents' experiences are an informative guide as to their perceptions and what they feel helped or hindered them in this program.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.