ADHD Symptom Severity Following Participation in a Pilot, 10-week, Manualized, Family-Based Behavioral Intervention

Family Skills Training Intervention for ADHD: Putting the Child Back into Child Therapy

“…The literature suggests that behavioral parent training is conducted either exclusively with parents or within a family therapy milieu, but with therapy objectives directed predominantly toward parents [5]. Similar to behavioral parent training, our proposal for a move in the field towards Family Skills Training recommends an intervention that provides parent-focused behavior management skills, while also incorporating child-focused intervention strategies and integrating child and parent focused strategies within a family milieu [24]. Family Skills Training (FST) can carry out these treatment objectives in a number of ways.…”

“…The acceptability of child-focused interventions to parents, children, and providers is critical to its broad implementation [24,32]. Parents' ratings of acceptability and perceived effectiveness for interventions that include a child component are generally higher than those with only a parent focus [35].…”

“…Although there have been no formal cost-effectiveness analyses conducted on the proposed child interventions for ADHD, the framework for such interventions yields promising benefits. For example, outcome studies of the Family Skills Training protocol indicated a larger effect size (Cohen's d=1.00) [24] than currently published effects for traditional behavioral parent management interventions (d=0.70 for comparable pre-post studies) [6]. Though this Family Skills Training study used two therapists for each family, treatments were implemented without any participant drop-outs and with similar or shorter dose response (10 sessions) [24] than those currently published (e.g.…”

“…The general treatment objective for FST is to improve parent and child self-efficacy for managing ADHD-related disruptive behaviors across home, school, and social settings. Although intended to be discussed only theoretically in this paper, it is useful to note that the model of Family Skills Training has been employed within the Family STARS (Family Skills Training for ADHD-Related Symptoms) program, a 10-session, manualized approach that we will discuss briefly in order to illustrate the goals of FST [24,25].…”

“…Session content is closely coordinated with the materials planned for complementary child-focused sessions, which utilize a strengths and mastery-based approach. In terms of specific session content, FST is structured to first provide psychoeducation about ADHD followed by strategies to improve structure and routines at home, parent facilitation of childdirected interaction, implementation of a positive reinforcement system, positive methods for correction and redirection, and finishing with generalization and behavioral relapse prevention methods [24].…”