Abstract
Parenting a child with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) or intellectual disabilities (IDs) can be stressful for many parents. Mindfulness-Based Positive Behavior Support (MBPBS) is a customized mindfulness program that enables parents and other caregivers to reduce their perceived psychological stress to normative levels through mindfulness procedures and to support children with ASD or ID to self-manage their challenging behaviors through positive behavior support (PBS). In this study, we evaluated whether MBPBS would have differential effects on the stress levels of mothers of adolescents with ASD (n = 47) or with ID (n = 45) and the effects of the program on the aggressive, disruptive, and compliance behaviors of their children. Both groups of mothers participated in the 40-week study (10 weeks control and 30 weeks MBPBS program), rated their own stress levels, and collected daily observational data on the adolescents’ behavior. Results showed significant reductions in the level of stress in both groups of mothers, but no differential effects on mothers of children with ASD or with ID. In addition, significant reductions in aggression and disruptive behavior and increases in compliance behaviors were observed in the adolescents in both groups. The results suggest that MBPBS is equally beneficial for mothers of adolescents with ASD or ID. In the present study, although the mothers of children with ID had slightly higher levels of stress at baseline and mothers of children with ASD had lower levels of stress following the MBPBS program, the program can be considered equally effective in reducing the stress levels of both groups of mothers. This suggests that the program may be effective regardless of baseline levels of mothers’ stress.
Highlights
Situational stress can help people to cope with and engage in adaptive responses to adverse situations (de Kloet et al, 2005; Joels and Baram, 2009), but prolonged stress usually has serious negative effects on brain function and behavior (Lupien et al, 2009; McEwen, 2012)
While this approach has produced evidencebased interventions that enhance quality of care, current research is shifting toward developing broad-based multi-level programs that focus on therapeutic processes derived from theory-based, testable, mechanisms of change as the basis for new interventions to achieve short- and long-term goals of the individual (Hayes and Hofmann, 2018)
Disruptive behavior decreased from control (M = 38.80, SD = 7.47) to intervention (M = 9.20, SD = 8.25)
Summary
Situational stress can help people to cope with and engage in adaptive responses to adverse situations (de Kloet et al, 2005; Joels and Baram, 2009), but prolonged stress usually has serious negative effects on brain function and behavior (Lupien et al, 2009; McEwen, 2012). The third-generation or third-wave of cognitive-behavioral approaches have typically focused on assembling and testing the effects of multi-component therapeutic procedures that target multiple treatment goals based on a number of variables, including therapeutic priority, immediacy of treatment needs, difficulty of the treatment, and other outcome dimensions specific to an individual (Hoffman and Hayes, 2018) While this approach has produced evidencebased interventions that enhance quality of care, current research is shifting toward developing broad-based multi-level programs that focus on therapeutic processes derived from theory-based, testable, mechanisms of change as the basis for new interventions to achieve short- and long-term goals of the individual (Hayes and Hofmann, 2018). Of the currently available therapies, mindfulness programs seem to align well with a therapeutic process approach because they work at multiple levels to produce short-term therapeutic change, as well as longer term transformational change in the individual
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