Feasibility Study on Parents Skill Training Program for Reducing Parental Distress and Disruptive Behavior of Their Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD)

Foundation University Islamabad

Status: Unknown

Conditions: Autism Spectrum Disorder; Disruptive Behaviours

Treatments: Behavioral: Parent Training for Disruptive Behaviours

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Other

Identifiers

NCT04339153

FUI/CTR/2020/2

Details and patient eligibility

About

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) usually exhibt problematic behavioral issues such as hitting, non-compliance, tantrums, spitting, headbanging and aggression, this not only cause distress for the child but also has a significant effect on the mental health of the parents.

In Pakistan, the rise in ASD children, lack of resources, non-advocacy, and limited knowledge amongst health professionals have created an alarming situation not only psychologically but also because of the economic burden. The current study is to assess the impact of a psychoeducation and parental skills training programme for reducing the parental psychological stress and disruptive behavior of their children with Autism. This is a 24 weeks parent education and behavioural management manualized programme based on the principles of applied behavior analysis.

The plan will include skills training on replacing problematic behaviours with more appropriate behaviours, improving social communication in verbal and non-verbal children, and interactions with peers and others. The parents will be trained on the manualized training programme in groups or as individual sessions using modelling, role-plays and rehearsal as training methods. A total of 60 parents of ASD children, age ranges from 3 to 9 years with disruptive behaviour will be recruited. The diagnosed ASD children screened from the standardised instruments not later than six months and scored > 15 on the subscale Irritability of Aberrant Behaviour Checklist will be randomly divided into two groups, 1) parents receiving manualized training program 2) parents receiving education sessions. The baseline will be determined baseline by using parent-rated instruments for behavioural problems using the Aberrant Behaviour Checklist, Home Situation Questionnaire, Vineland Adaptive behaviour scales, Symptom Checklist 90, and Parental Distress Index. Overall there will be 12 core sessions on the Parental Education (PE) pertaining to parent education including advocacy and educational planning over 24 weeks and 11 sessions of Parent Training (PT) for managing behavioural issues of autistic children. Each session will last for 60 to 90 minutes. There will be six months follow up, and evaluation will be done by the masked assessor. All the sessions will be from a trained psychologist and behaviour analysts who have more than 1 year experience of working with children with ASD. To ensure treatment integrity, all training sessions will be assessed after every 4 weeks by using behavioural measures to evaluate the correct implementation of treatment protocol. Some of the sessions will be recorded.

It is anticipated that parent training will improve the mental health of parents and reduce the disruptive behaviour of children with Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Enrollment: 60 estimated patients

Sex: All

Ages: 3 to 10 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

Children aged 3 to 9 years will be recruited. The gold standard diagnostic tools i.e. the autism diagnostic observation schedule (ADOS) will be administered by a trained assessor to confirm the diagnosis of ASD.

To ensure our intervention reaches children with behavioural difficulties, children who will score > 15 on the subscale of Irritability ABC-C will be included.

Exclusion criteria

Potential participants with an intellectual disability and non-receptive, or who have a severe medical illness will be excluded from the study.

Although unlikely to occur, children with ASD whose parents have received any intensive parent training during the past 24 months will not be included

Trial design

Primary purpose: Treatment

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: Single Blind

---

60 participants in 2 patient groups

Parent Training (PT)

Experimental group

Description:

The goal of intervention plan is to teach the basic applied behaviour analysis techniques to find out the antecedent of the problem behaviour, enhance adaptive skills and reduce noncompliance. Sessions will be interactive, and action-oriented through the provision of workbooks, modelling, videos, rehearsal (with child when present), homework tasks, and feedback (Bearss et al., 2015). The parents will be trained on the protocol and delivered 60 to 90 minutes preferably individual sessions over 24 weeks.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Parent Training for Disruptive Behaviours

Parent Education (PE)

No Intervention group

Description:

The Parent education group will serve as an attention-placebo condition to control for general effects of the intervention. There will be 12 core sessions and 1 home visit regarding knowledge of autism, learning about the principles of managing behavior, teaching new skills; improving social interaction and communication. Each session will last for 60 to 90 minutes over 24 weeks.