The Distinguishing Characteristics of Parents Seeking a Mindful Parenting Intervention in Child Mental Health Care

Abstract

As a clinical intervention, Mindful Parenting has positive effects on parental stress and psychopathology, as well as child psychopathology. However, previous studies have not considered what characterizes parents and families who receive this type of intervention. The current study utilized a quasi-experimental design to determine the characteristics that distinguish parents seeking or referred to a mindful parenting intervention in community child mental health care centers. Two groups of parents were recruited to the study: treatment-seeking parents (n = 89), and a comparison group of parents from a community population (n = 66). All parents completed measures relating to their child’s psychopathology, their own psychopathology, general mindful awareness, and parenting measures of stress, over-reactivity, experiential avoidance and mindful parenting. A cross-sectional comparison confirmed that the treatment-seeking parents reported significantly higher psychopathology in their child (d = 0.91–1.19) and in themselves (d = 0.99–1.21), lower general mindful awareness, and higher parenting stress, over-reactivity, parental experiential avoidance and lower mindful parenting than the community parents. Across all outcomes, group differences in mindful parenting indicated the largest effect (d = 1.77), followed by parenting stress (d = 1.42), general mindfulness (d = 1.34), parental over-reactivity (d = 1.32), and parental experiential avoidance (d = 1.21). Hierarchical binary logistic regression analyses indicated that, next to higher child internalizing problems, lower mindful parenting distinguished treatment-seeking parents from community parents. Those parents seeking or referred to a mindful parenting intervention may benefit most from improvements in the very construct that the intervention targets: cultivating mindful parenting.