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The mechanism and effectiveness of mindfulness-based intervention for reducing the psychological distress of parents of children with autism spectrum disorder: A protocol of randomized control trial of ecological momentary intervention and assessment

BACKGROUND: Existing studies have unequivocally demonstrated that parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience various stressful daily life events and suffer from psychological distress. Mindfulness level is found to be an effective buffer between parents’ appraisal of stress l...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Wang, Qi, Ng, Siu-man, Zhou, Xiaochen
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Public Library of Science 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10499232/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37703248
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0291168
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author Wang, Qi
Ng, Siu-man
Zhou, Xiaochen
author_facet Wang, Qi
Ng, Siu-man
Zhou, Xiaochen
author_sort Wang, Qi
collection PubMed
description BACKGROUND: Existing studies have unequivocally demonstrated that parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience various stressful daily life events and suffer from psychological distress. Mindfulness level is found to be an effective buffer between parents’ appraisal of stress life events and psychological distress. However, the mechanism behind the function of mindfulness is unclear, and traditional mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) in experimental settings is not tailored to personal real-life needs. This study proposes to conduct a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to examine the effectiveness of MBI delivered by ecological momentary intervention (EMI) and assessed by ecological momentary assessment (EMA) in changing participants’ cognitive appraisal of stressful life events and thus reducing the psychological distress of parents of children with ASD. METHOD: The proposed study will recruit 670 parents of children with ASD and randomly assign them to the intervention and control groups (335 in each group). Participants in the intervention group will install the EMI/A app on their smartphones. In the app, participants can receive practice prompts daily, browse and practice different mindfulness exercises in the intervention library at any time, talk to a virtual counselor (chatbot) when feeling stressed, complete EMA on the cognitive appraisal of life events, and receive the log of change of psychological status daily. Participants in the control group will only receive audio-based standardized mindfulness practice instructions three times per week. The effects of MBI will be assessed based on the EMA data, right after the intervention and at the 2-month follow-up. The primary outcome will be participants’ psychological distress measured by the depression anxiety stress scale. The secondary outcomes will include participants’ subjective well-being, measured by the satisfaction with life scale, and level of resilience, measured by the psychological empowerment scale. Multilevel structural equational modelling will be applied to examine the pathways of the relationship between daily life events, cognitive appraisal, and psychological distress. DISCUSSION: The potential benefit of the proposed study is to increase the psychological well-being of parents of children with ASD, and the method may extend to participants suffering from other psychological issues in the future. Trial registration: This trial has been registered on clinicaltrials.gov with the ID of NCT05746468.
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spelling pubmed-104992322023-09-14 The mechanism and effectiveness of mindfulness-based intervention for reducing the psychological distress of parents of children with autism spectrum disorder: A protocol of randomized control trial of ecological momentary intervention and assessment Wang, Qi Ng, Siu-man Zhou, Xiaochen PLoS One Study Protocol BACKGROUND: Existing studies have unequivocally demonstrated that parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) experience various stressful daily life events and suffer from psychological distress. Mindfulness level is found to be an effective buffer between parents’ appraisal of stress life events and psychological distress. However, the mechanism behind the function of mindfulness is unclear, and traditional mindfulness-based intervention (MBI) in experimental settings is not tailored to personal real-life needs. This study proposes to conduct a randomized controlled trial (RCT) to examine the effectiveness of MBI delivered by ecological momentary intervention (EMI) and assessed by ecological momentary assessment (EMA) in changing participants’ cognitive appraisal of stressful life events and thus reducing the psychological distress of parents of children with ASD. METHOD: The proposed study will recruit 670 parents of children with ASD and randomly assign them to the intervention and control groups (335 in each group). Participants in the intervention group will install the EMI/A app on their smartphones. In the app, participants can receive practice prompts daily, browse and practice different mindfulness exercises in the intervention library at any time, talk to a virtual counselor (chatbot) when feeling stressed, complete EMA on the cognitive appraisal of life events, and receive the log of change of psychological status daily. Participants in the control group will only receive audio-based standardized mindfulness practice instructions three times per week. The effects of MBI will be assessed based on the EMA data, right after the intervention and at the 2-month follow-up. The primary outcome will be participants’ psychological distress measured by the depression anxiety stress scale. The secondary outcomes will include participants’ subjective well-being, measured by the satisfaction with life scale, and level of resilience, measured by the psychological empowerment scale. Multilevel structural equational modelling will be applied to examine the pathways of the relationship between daily life events, cognitive appraisal, and psychological distress. DISCUSSION: The potential benefit of the proposed study is to increase the psychological well-being of parents of children with ASD, and the method may extend to participants suffering from other psychological issues in the future. Trial registration: This trial has been registered on clinicaltrials.gov with the ID of NCT05746468. Public Library of Science 2023-09-13 /pmc/articles/PMC10499232/ /pubmed/37703248 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0291168 Text en © 2023 Wang et al https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Study Protocol
Wang, Qi
Ng, Siu-man
Zhou, Xiaochen
The mechanism and effectiveness of mindfulness-based intervention for reducing the psychological distress of parents of children with autism spectrum disorder: A protocol of randomized control trial of ecological momentary intervention and assessment
title The mechanism and effectiveness of mindfulness-based intervention for reducing the psychological distress of parents of children with autism spectrum disorder: A protocol of randomized control trial of ecological momentary intervention and assessment
title_full The mechanism and effectiveness of mindfulness-based intervention for reducing the psychological distress of parents of children with autism spectrum disorder: A protocol of randomized control trial of ecological momentary intervention and assessment
title_fullStr The mechanism and effectiveness of mindfulness-based intervention for reducing the psychological distress of parents of children with autism spectrum disorder: A protocol of randomized control trial of ecological momentary intervention and assessment
title_full_unstemmed The mechanism and effectiveness of mindfulness-based intervention for reducing the psychological distress of parents of children with autism spectrum disorder: A protocol of randomized control trial of ecological momentary intervention and assessment
title_short The mechanism and effectiveness of mindfulness-based intervention for reducing the psychological distress of parents of children with autism spectrum disorder: A protocol of randomized control trial of ecological momentary intervention and assessment
title_sort mechanism and effectiveness of mindfulness-based intervention for reducing the psychological distress of parents of children with autism spectrum disorder: a protocol of randomized control trial of ecological momentary intervention and assessment
topic Study Protocol
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10499232/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37703248
http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0291168
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