Therapeutic Intervention and Parenting Style of Abusive Parents

BACKGROUND: Victims of abuse comprise a significant proportion of all child psychiatric admissions, with an estimated 30% incidence of lifetime of physical and sexual abuse among child and adolescent outpatients, and as high as 55% among psychiatric inpatients. OBJECTIVES: The present study was conducted to examine the effects of therapeutic intervention and parent management training on parenting skill of abusive parents. PATIENTS AND METHODS: The study population consisted of all children who were referred to Child Psychiatric and Pediatric Departments of Imam Hossein Hospital, Tehran, IR Iran diagnosed with child abuse. Children and their families were visited by a psychiatrist for psychiatric problems. Later, the necessary interventions were taken for the children. To study the effect of intervention, parents completed ‘Being a Parent and Parenting Scale’ before intervention, and then again, in the third and sixth months following the intervention. The interventions included 8 weekly parent management training sessions for all of the involved parents and additional pharmacologic and psychological interventions according to the subjects’ needs. RESULTS: Participants included 73 children with the mean age of 6.9 ± 4.3 year, while the mean age of parents was 31.76 ± 6.52 year for the mothers and 38.07 ± 8.45 year for the fathers. General anxiety disorder (30.1%) and depression (27.4%) were the most common psychiatric disorders among mothers. In parenting scale, there were significant differences between the zero and third month in all subscales (P = 0.008), but there was no significant difference in verbosity and overreactivity after 6 months. Laxness showed significant changes over the period (P = 0.03). In viewing the ‘Being a Parent Scale’, there was no significant difference in satisfaction and competency subscales before and after the intervention. CONCLUSIONS: Therapeutic intervention and parent management training improves parenting skill of abusive parents, and this might lead to fewer incidents of abuse or neglect.