The Change in Parental Symptoms and Dysfunctional Cognitions in the Course of Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy: Sustainability Until One-Year Post-Treatment

Abstract

Objectives: Symptoms of distress and dysfunctional posttraumatic cognitions (PTCs) have been frequently described in parents of children and adolescents with posttraumatic stress symptoms (PTSS), especially if the parents had experienced traumatic events themselves. The inclusion of non-offending parents in trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy (TF-CBT) for children and adolescents may, thus, help parents to cope with the traumatic experience of their child. The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of TF-CBT on the parents, while taking their own history of traumatic experiences into account. Methods: Parents (N = 57, 84.2% mothers) of children and adolescents who received TF-CBT completed the Posttraumatic Diagnostic Scale, the Beck Depression Inventory, the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory, and the Posttraumatic Cognitions Inventory. Treatment effects and the sustainability at 6-and 12 months post-treatment were tested via repeated-measures analysis of variance, following the intention-to-treat approach. Results: N = 19 (35.2%) of the parents evaluated their child's trauma as the worst event, 18 (33.3%) rated their own experience as their worst event, and 17 (31.5%) indicated that their own worst traumatic experience was the same type as their child's trauma. Significant improvements ( p < 0.001) emerged for parental PTSS [F(2, 837) = 8.27; d = 0.30], depression [F(3, 284) = 14.73; d = 0.41], anxiety symptoms [F(3, 185) = 17.44; d = 0.64], and dysfunctional PTCs [F(2, 465) = 13.58; d = 0.46].Sustainability of these treatment gains remained at both follow-up time points ( p < 0.05). There was no interaction between the time and the reference person of the traumatic index event, reported by parents. Conclusion: These results indicate parental benefits from participation in TF-CBT delivered to their child, until 1-year post-treatment and independently from the parental trauma history. The ongoing tendency of improvement might indicate that TF-CBT furnishes children and their parents with skills to further reduce the impact of their traumatic memories. ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01516827.

Traumatic Events and Posttraumatic Stress Symptoms in a Treatment-seeking sample of Ukrainian Children During the War

“…Potential explanations for the high consistency could be that Ukrainian families might communicate especially well about the child's trauma and related stress symptoms, or parents might have an especially good understanding of their child's symptoms as they might currently experience similar traumatic events and symptoms in light of the war [17]. Hence, it might be especially important to include these parents/ caregivers in the child's trauma-focused treatment as this has been shown to be bene cial for parental symptomatology [18,19].…”