The Effectiveness of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy Group Intervention (Navigator ACT) for Parents of Children With Neurodevelopmental Disabilities: A Randomized Controlled Trial.
T Holmberg Bergman, P Lappalainen, A Ghaderi and 1 others
Group ACT for stressed parents of children with neurodevelopmental disabilities beat usual care on parental psychological flexibility (67.2 to 51.0 versus 64.9 to 60.0 on a 16-to-112 scale) and parenting stress, but not on anxiety, depression, or child difficulties.
Key findings
1The primary outcome, parental psychological flexibility (PAAQ), improved significantly more in the ACT group than in the usual-care group, both immediately after treatment and at the 4-month follow-up.
2Parenting stress (PSS) also decreased more in the ACT group than in the usual-care group, with small effect sizes at both post-treatment and follow-up.
3No significant between-group differences were found for parental anxiety, depression, mindfulness, or the child's overall difficulties.
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How it was doneWhat they found
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What it does not show
No blinding at post-treatment or follow-up assessments; participants and data collectors knew group allocation, and all outcomes were self-report, which may inflate the ACT effect. The control group received usual care rather than an active psychological treatment, so the comparison is against a heterogeneous mix of services rather than a matched intervention. 84.7% of participants were mothers and 59.6% had a university degree, limiting generalizability to fathers and less-educated parents. The 4-month follow-up is short; whether the flexibility gains hold beyond that is unknown. The primary measure (PAAQ) had a Cronbach's alpha of 0.65 and the child difficulties measure (SDQ) 0.70, both at or below the conventional 0.70 threshold, which may have reduced sensitivity. 56 of 70 ACT-group parents attended at least four of five sessions; four dropped out before the first session, four attended one or two, and six attended three.
Declared interests
Funded by Swedish public and charitable bodies (Forskningsrådet om Hälsa, Region Stockholm, Stiftelsen Sunnerdahls Handikappfond, Swedish Association of Local Authorities and Regions, and others). Three authors receive royalties from publishers for textbooks unrelated to this study. No industry or treatment-provider funding.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the small improvement in parent-reported child prosocial behaviors as evidence that ACT changes your child's behavior. The effect was small (d = 0.46 to 0.53), the mechanism is unknown, the child difficulties score did not differ between groups, and the measure had only acceptable reliability. The paper itself notes it could not analyze mechanisms of change.
Summarised by AI from the full paper, without a clinician reviewing it. Check it against the source before it changes what you do. Read it on PubMed →