Pai.ACT Programme for Parents of Children With Special Healthcare Needs - Phase I

Not Applicable

Recruiting

• Conditions: Development Delay; Chronic Disease; Neurodevelopmental Disorders; Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder; Autism Spectrum Disorder
• Interventions: Behavioral: Focused Acceptance and Commitment Therapy

• Registration Number: NCT05584059
• Lead Sponsor: Chinese University of Hong Kong

Brief Summary

This study aims to determine the feasibility, acceptability and potential efficacy of an individual, video-conferencing based Focused Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (FACT) on the mental well-being of parents of children with Special Health Care Needs(SHCN). The study also aims to explore the experience of parents after participating in the individual-based FACT sessions offered by the trained FACT interventionists.

Detailed Description

Parents of children with Special Health Care Needs (SHCN) have always been under tremendous pressure to care for their children. They have been experiencing significant caregiving difficulties, such as scheduling and accompanying multiple follow-ups for rehabilitation and functional recovery and managing the child's symptoms and problematic behaviours. With the strike of COVID-19, these parents' stress may even be exacerbated due to the lockdown measures. Children's needs become more demanding with the suspension of the usual care services. Parenting stress has been known to affect parent-child interactions and increase negative parenting behaviours such as harsh, permissive or neglecting parenting impairing the parent's capacity to respond to the demands of the child's illness, which may, in turn, exacerbate the child's health problem and well-being. Recent evidence has advocated the efficacy of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) on mental health in different population groups, including healthy individuals, parents, children and those with mental health problems. To increase the reach of ACT and overcome the plausible disruptions of mental health services arising from the pandemic, the study proposes to use an innovative intervention approach, that is a brief version of ACT (Focused ACT), delivered by trained FACT interventionists in individual-based, video-conferencing format. The conversation data between the parent and the interventionist will be further analyzed for developing a Deep-Learning Mental Health Advisory System in the second phase of the Pai.ACT project. This study aims to determine the feasibility, acceptability and potential efficacy of an individual, video-conferencing-based Focused Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (FACT) on the mental well-being of parents of children with Special Health Care Needs(SHCN). The study also aims to explore the experience of parents after participating in the individual-based FACT sessions offered by the trained FACT interventionists.

Study Timeline

• Study First Submitted: 2022-10-14
• Study First Submitted QC: 2022-10-14
• Study First Posted: 2022-10-18
• Study Start: 2022-12-01
• Status Verified: 2024-02
• Last Update Submitted: 2024-02-05
• Last Update Posted: 2024-02-07
• Primary Completion: 2024-12-30
• Study Completion: 2025-03-31

Recruitment & Eligibility

• Status: RECRUITING
• Sex: All
• Target Recruitment: 150

Inclusion Criteria

• Cantonese-speaking Hong Kong residents
• living together with the child who is at preschool/school-age (3-9 years old)
• adopt the responsibility of taking care of the child,
• has daily access to their iPhone and Android smartphones.

In addition, potential eligible parents who respond "yes" to any of the five validated screening questions in the Children with Special Health Care Needs (SHCN) Screener (see https://www.childhealthdata.org/docs/cshcn/technical-summary-of-cshcn-screener.pdf) will then be asked the associated follow-up questions to determine whether the child possesses physical, neurodevelopmental/emotional problem(s) that has lasted for at least 12 months. Only children with a positive response(s) to ≥ 1 item in each of the associated follow-up questions will be classified as children with SHCN.

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Exclusion Criteria

• Parents with severe mental illness or developmental disabilities which impaired their ability to comprehend the content of the programme will be excluded.

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Study & Design

• Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL
• Study Design: SINGLE_GROUP

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
FACT Group	Focused Acceptance and Commitment Therapy	4-6 weeks of 45-60 minute individual-based Focused Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (FACT) counselling sessions delivered via video-conferencing format or face-to-face

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Parental depressive symptoms	Change from baseline assessment to immediate post-assessment	The Patient Health Questionnaire (PHQ-9, 9-item, 4-point Likert scale) will be used to assess the frequency of the parents experiencing depressive symptoms in the past two weeks. The Chinese version of the PHQ-9 has demonstrated good internal consistency reliability (Cronbach's alpha = 0.86) and a 2-week test-retest correlation coefficient.
Parental anxiety symptoms	Change from baseline assessment to immediate post-assessment	The Generalized Anxiety Disorder-7 (GAD-7, 7-item, 4-point Likert scale) will be used to measure the severity of anxiety symptoms. The Chinese version of the GAD-7 demonstrated good reliability and validity with a Cronbach's coefficient of 0.91.
Parental Stress	Change from baseline assessment to immediate post-assessment	The Parental Stress Scale (PSS, 16-item, 5-point scale) will be used to assess parenting stress. A higher score represents a higher level of parental stress. The Chinese version of the PSS has demonstrated acceptable psychometric properties and is therefore suitable for use by researchers to assess the parental stress levels of Chinese parents.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Parental Psychological Flexibility	Change from baseline assessment to immediate post-assessment	The PsyFlex (6-item 5-point Likert Scale) will assess all the six therapeutic processes of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT). Each item refers to one of the core skills that ACT focuses on when developing psychological flexibility and well-being. The score is then interpreted such that higher scores represent higher psychological flexibility.

Trial Locations

Locations (5)

Hong Kong School Nurse Association; 🇭🇰 Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Hong Kong Young Women's Christian Association; 🇭🇰 Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Yang Memorial Methodist Social Service; 🇭🇰 Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Hong Kong Christian Service; 🇭🇰 Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Hong Kong Federation of Youth Groups; 🇭🇰 Hong Kong, Hong Kong