Effectiveness of Barkley's parental education program in reducing the symptoms of oppositional defiant disorder on preschool children

The purpose of the present research was to investigat the effectiveness of Barkley’s Parental education program on decreasing the symptoms of oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) in preschool children. An experimental and a pretest-posttest control group design method have been applied in this regard. Participants of the study were all parents of 40 children who were at pre-school grade. To find and select the main subjects, two steps were taken. At the first step, the selected parents were those whose children gained the scores higher than cut-off point in (CSI-4), and at the second step, for final selection, these chosen parents attended the Structured Diagnostic Interview-based on DSM-IV-TR criteria. Main subjects were finally, those parents whose children's disorder symptoms were confirmed through the diagnostic interview selected and divided randomly in to two experimental (15 people) and controlgroup (15 people). The experimental group received Barkley’s Parental education program while the control group received no intervention. The data analysis indicated that the children of mothers who were in experimental group had a significant decrease in the symptoms of ODD, while the children of mothers in control group showed no significant difference. The results of this research suggest that the Barkley’s Parental education program is helpful to reduce symptoms of childrens with oppositional defiant disorder. There was a significant decrease in the symptoms of ODD in the children of mothers in experimental group. There was no significant difference between boys and girls.