Abstract
BackgroundParents play an important role in the lives of adolescents and efforts aimed at strengthening parenting skills and increasing knowledge on adolescent development hold much promise to prevent and mitigate adolescent mental health problems. Innovative interventions that make use of technology-based platforms might be an effective and efficient way to deliver such support to parents. This protocol presents the design of a randomised controlled trial to investigate the effectiveness of a SMS-based mobile intervention (MyTeen) for parents of adolescents on promoting parental competence and mental health literacy.MethodsA parallel two-arm randomised controlled trial will be conducted in New Zealand, aiming to recruit 214 parents or primary caregivers of adolescents aged 10–15 years via community outreach and social media. Eligible participants will be allocated 1:1 into the control or the intervention group, stratified by ethnicity. The intervention group will receive a tailored programme of text messages aimed at improving their parental competence and mental health literacy, over 4 weeks. The control group (care-as-usual) will receive no intervention from the research team, but can access alternative services if they wish, and will be offered the intervention programme upon completion of a 3-month post-randomisation follow-up assessment. Data will be obtained at baseline, post intervention (1-month), and 3-month follow up. The primary outcome is parental competence assessed by the Parental Sense of Competence Scale at 1-month follow up. Secondary outcomes include: mental health literacy; knowledge of help-seeking; parental distress; parent-adolescent communication; and programme satisfaction.DiscussionTo our knowledge this is the first randomised controlled trial on the effectiveness of delivering a parenting support intervention for parents of adolescents solely via a SMS-based mobile intervention. If effective, it could have great potential to reach and support parents of adolescents.Trial registrationAustralian New Zealand Clinical Trial Registry (ACTRN12618000117213) Registered on 29/01/2018.
Highlights
Parents play an important role in the lives of adolescents and efforts aimed at strengthening parenting skills and increasing knowledge on adolescent development hold much promise to prevent and mitigate adolescent mental health problems
Of concern is the high rate of reported clinical depressive symptoms (18.3% for Māori girls and 8.7% for Māori boys) measured by the Reynolds Adolescent Depression Scale – Short Form (RADS-SF) [3, 4]
We evaluate the effectiveness of a SMS-based mobile intervention for parents of adolescents on promoting parental competence and mental health literacy
Summary
Design This study is a parallel two-arm randomised controlled trial (RCT). Eligible parents/primary caregivers (hereafter referred to as parents) will be randomly allocated to the MyTeen intervention programme or care-as-usual condition. Randomisation will be performed upon completion of the baseline assessment, and participants will be notified via email which group they have been allocated to Those that are randomised into the intervention group will receive the MyTeen programme the day following the notification email. At 1-month post randomisation, participants in both groups will receive an email directing them to complete the 1-month follow up assessment. Sample size calculation We aim to recruit 214 participants in total (n = 107 per randomised group; one parent per household; 30% Māori, 30% Pacific) This sample size will provide 80% power at p = 0.05 to detect a group difference of 2.5 in the Parenting Sense of Competence scale (PSOC) score at 1-month follow up (SD = 5.8), and allowing for an estimated 20% loss to follow up. Academic papers and summary reports will be provided to funders
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