Parenting Stress

This study aims to examine the relationships among life balance, parenting stress, and mental health in parents of preschool children, and to develop an individualized life balance promotion program for this population. Parents of preschool children will be recruited to support program development and to evaluate its feasibility and effectiveness.

The goal of this qualitative study is to develop a therapy protocol for fathers of children with special needs in Hong Kong. The therapy is called Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which helps people cope with difficult emotions by building psychological flexibility - the ability to accept and adjust to hard situations. The main questions it aims to answer are: 1. What are the experiences and needs of fathers raising children with special needs? 2. What content and format of an ACT programme would be most helpful for these fathers? Researchers will conduct focus group interviews with two groups of participants: fathers raising children with special needs and social workers who work with these families. The interviews will take about 60 to 90 minutes each. Participants will: 1. Take part in a recorded focus group interview 2. Share their experiences, challenges, and views on what an ACT program should include The findings will be used to develop a protocol for an ACT programme to improve the mental health of fathers raising children with special needs.

The Family Check-Up Online, a digital health intervention, was designed to improve child mental health through family-centered intervention. The Family Check-Up is grounded in over 25 years of evidence-based research and has been shown to improve child mental health and behavior including depression and conduct problems. The investigators were supported by an SBIR Phase I award (R43MH132191) to evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of the digital health product in schools and to adapt the product based on findings of that work. Findings from that project suggested the model is a good fit for schools, with school providers stating a need for family-centered interventions that target child behavior and mental health, but with few resources or evidence-based programs available. The research team received feedback that suggests the model should be evaluated as both an uncoached version and coached version, delivered with provider support. In the current project, the investigators plan to continue work in schools to develop the model for commercialization, including understanding the process for embedding the FCU Online into current student support systems and implementation factors that lead to maintenance of the model in schools. The investigators plan to conduct a hybrid type 2 effectiveness-implementation trial to evaluate the effectiveness of the FCU Online when delivered by real world providers. Thirty providers (N=600 students/families) will be randomly assigned to receive training in the FCU Online coached vs. uncoached models. The research team will then evaluate outcomes including family relationships, parenting skills, and child mental health and behavior. The investigators predict that the FCU Online will improve child mental health and behavior, and will test for moderators such as provider training and child baseline risk. Findings will have implications for commercialization of the product in schools and implementation of the model in a range of different school settings.

The development of post-adoption interventions aimed at promoting parental well-being and positive parenting is an urgent need. Mindful Parenting-based interventions appear to be particularly promising in this field, as they address parents' needs in coping with the emotional challenges of parenting and seem to foster greater compassionate, non-judgmental acceptance toward themselves and their children, as well as enhance the self-regulation of immediate emotional states in favor of long-term goals that support the parent-child relationship. However, the delivery of such interventions in face-to-face formats for adoptive parents (APs), particularly within the scope of universal prevention, faces considerable barriers (e.g., wide geographical dispersion of APs, limited mental health specialization among adoption service teams). eHealth tools represent an innovative pathway for intervention that may help overcome these barriers, given their multiple advantages, including: (1) improved access to healthcare regardless of time and location, (2) greater user autonomy in managing their own care, and (3) enhanced quality and innovation in service delivery, supported by the diversity, efficiency, and technological advancement of these systems. The primary goal of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of AdoptMindful2Care@Web, a new 9-module, web-based post-adoption psychological intervention grounded in the principles of mindful parenting. This pilot randomized controlled trial, with a two-arm design, precedes the full RCT planned as AdoptMindful2Care@Web. It is open to mothers and fathers who have at least one adoptive child under 18 years of age, whose adoption was legally decreed by the court less than 24 months prior to enrollment, who are not involved in any other ongoing adoption process, who are able to read and write in Portuguese, and who have regular access to the internet and electronic devices. A minimum of 90 families will be recruited with the support of all Portuguese governmental adoption agencies. After expressing interest in participating through an expression-of-interest form available on the project website, a member of the research team will contact them by telephone to conduct an initial screening (brief interview), with the following aims: (1) to clarify any questions regarding the study and (2) to assess their eligibility for participation (i.e., to confirm whether they meet the inclusion criteria and do not fall under any exclusion criteria). At the end of the telephone screening, they will be informed of the decision of eligibility. If deemed eligible and willing to participate, a specific date and time will be scheduled for completion of the online study assessment protocol corresponding to the first assessment point (T0). To support adherence to this appointment, a reminder will be sent on the scheduled day (via text message or email, as applicable). Eligible participants will be randomly assigned to either the intervention group (AdoptMindful2Care@Web) or a waitlist control group (participants will receive the intervention after the study concludes). The intervention includes eight core modules plus a follow-up module, all carried out via an online platform, each lasting approximately 40 minutes. Participants in both groups will complete assessments at four time points: baseline, post-intervention, 1- and 2-month follow-up. These assessments will include both self-report (e.g., parenting stress) and hetero-report measures (e.g., children's emotional and developmental difficulties).

Parenting children with special health care needs can be stressful and weigh on the caregivers' mental health. For the individuals with special needs, the mismatch between their needs and the normative practice in the world around them can be frustrating and detrimental to their functioning. The demands and concerns to these families can be so real that it may not be sensible to examine the validity or helpfulness of the distressing thoughts or feelings but to promote psychological flexibility, which is a key to value-guided living. This pilot study explores the effects and feasibility of a group-based intervention for families of individuals with special health care needs.