Elsevier

Behaviour Research and Therapy

Volume 97, October 2017, Pages 163-169
Behaviour Research and Therapy

Do parental ADHD symptoms reduce the efficacy of parent training for preschool ADHD? A secondary analysis of a randomized controlled trial

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2017.08.002Get rights and content

Highlights

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    Examined if parental ADHD symptoms reduced the efficacy of BPT.

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    ADHD and ODD symptoms of preschoolers with ADHD were outcomes.

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    Parent ADHD symptoms had limited impact on the outcome of BPT.

Abstract

Previous studies have suggested that children with Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) may benefit less from behavioral parent training (BPT) if their parents have high levels of ADHD symptoms. We conducted a secondary analysis of data from a randomized controlled trial to test the hypothesis that parental ADHD symptoms reduce the efficacy of two BPT programs in a sample of preschoolers with ADHD. One intervention was specifically designed for children with ADHD (NFPP: New Forest Parenting Programme) and one was designed for children with Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD) (HNC: Helping the Noncompliant Child). Neither intervention was adapted to address parental ADHD symptoms. This secondary analysis included data from 164 parents and their 3-4 year-old children who were randomly assigned to one of the two programs or a waitlist group. Children were compared on ADHD and ODD outcomes at post-intervention and a 6-month follow-up. The presence of parent ADHD symptoms reduced the efficacy of BPT in only one of 16 analyses. Implications and limitations (e.g., low baseline rate of parental ADHD symptoms) of the findings are provided.

Section snippets

Method

Complete details of the Methods are available in Abikoff et al. (2015).

Sample

Parents and children who participated in the NFPP (N = 67) and HNC (N = 63) interventions and the waitlist control (N = 34) served as participants. Eight dropped out from NFPP (11.9%), four from HNC (6.3%), and one from the waitlist group (2.9%), but all were included in analyses. (See Abikoff et al., 2015, for the CONSORT diagram and complete sample details).

The children in the sample were 74.6% male, 68.3% White, 14.6% Black, 9.8% Asian, and 7.3% other; 26.9% of the children were Hispanic.

Discussion

It has been hypothesized that parental ADHD symptoms may compromise the efficacy of BPT by interfering with parents learning and consistently implementing skills taught in these interventions. This study examined if parental ADHD symptoms reduced the effectiveness of two BPT programs on children's ADHD and ODD symptoms. Our findings provided very little support for this hypothesis as only one significant interaction aligned with it. For teacher reported child ODD symptoms, HNC was more

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in studies involving human participants were in accordance with the ethical standards of the institutional and/or national research committee and with the 1964 Helsinki declaration and its later amendments or comparable ethical standards.

Funding

This research was supported by NIMH grant 5R01MH074556 to the last author, NIMH grant R01MH100377 to the first author, and NICHD grant F31HD082858 to the second author. The content is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent he official views of the National Institutes of Health.

Conflicts of interest

J.P., V.D.P, and H.B.A. have no conflict of interest to report. R.F. and N.L. receive royalties from the book ‘Parenting the Strong Willed Child’, a derivative of ‘Helping the Noncompliant Child’ (HNC). E.S.B. declares the following competing interests during the last three years: fees for speaking, consultancy, research funding and conference support from Shire; speaker fees from Janssen Cilag, Medice & Obtech, consultancy support from Neurotech Solutions, book royalties from OUP and Jessica

Informed consent

Informed consent was obtained from all individual participants included in the study.

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