A Comparative study on Effectiveness of Behavior Parent Training (BPT) and Pharmacotherapy on Intensity of symptoms in Male Primary School Students with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD) and Parental Stress in their Mothers

Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD) is one of the most common neurodevelopmental disorders in childhood which involves behavioral and learning disturbances in children.  In addition, the disorder usually causes some problems in a child’s interaction with the peer group and family members. The present research addresses the comparative effectiveness of Behavior Parent Training (BPT) based on Barkley’s approach and pharmacotherapy with Methylphenidate (MPH, Ritalin) on the intensity of symptoms in male primary school students with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (AD/HD) and parental stress in their mothers. The research instruments consisted of the first subscale of Children’s Symptoms Inventory, 4th Edition (CSI-4) developed by Gadow and Sprafkin (1994) and Parental Stress Scale (Berry & Jones, 1995).  Results revealed positive outcomes of both intervention methods; however, the effectiveness of MPH significantly surpassed that of BPT on both of the dependent variables.