Group-Based Parenting Programs for Improving Parenting and Psychosocial Functioning: A Systematic Review

Abstract

Parental psychosocial health can have a significant effect on the later psychological health of the child. Parenting programs have been shown to have an effect on the emotional and behavioral adjustment of children, and this review examined such programs’ effect on parental psychosocial well-being. We searched a range of electronic databases and included randomized controlled trials that compared a group-based parenting program with a control condition and used at least 1 standardized measure of parental psychosocial health. We used a random effects meta-analysis, and we report standardized mean differences (SMD) and 95% confidence intervals (CI) for all outcomes. We included 48 studies with 4,937 participants and evaluated 3 types of programs: behavioral, cognitive-behavioral, and multimodal. Overall, we find parents’ participation in group-based parenting programs is associated with statistically significant short-term improvements in depression (SMD -0.17, 95% CI -0.28 to -0.07), anxiety (SMD -0.22, 95...