The effect of parent and child interaction therapy focused emotional on parent's reactions to children negative emotions in children with depression

Several studies have been conducted on the effectiveness of parent-child interaction therapy on internalized disorders in children. However, no study has been conducted on the effectiveness of emotion-based parent-child interaction therapy on the symptoms of depression disorder in children.

The present study was conducted to evaluate the effect of emotion-based parent-child interaction therapy on parents’ reaction to negative emotions in children with depression.

The present study was quasi-experimental research with pre-test and post-test design with control group. The statistical population of the study included all boys with depression disorder at the age range of 4 to 5.5 years in Isfahan. Thirty children and parents were selected by purposeful sampling method and were randomly assigned to two equal groups. Preschool Children Emotion Checklist (Lobby et al., 2004) and the Parents' Reaction to Child's Negative Emotions Scale (Mirabel, 2015) were used to collect data. The mentioned therapy was implemented in 14 sessions of 1 hour per week for the subjects in the experimental group, but the control group did not receive any treatment. Data were analyzed by descriptive statistics and analysis of covariance.

The results revealed that there was a statistically significant difference between the children of experimental and control groups in terms of mean scores of depression symptoms in the post-test phase (F = 24.63, P = 0.000 and Eta = 0.607). Analysis of covariance showed that this therapy in the subjects of the experimental group in the post-test phase improved the score of parents’ reaction to children's negative emotions (F = 14.46, P = 0.001 and Eta = 0.637). (P<0.05).

Children and parents participating in this therapeutic program showed improvement in depression symptoms and parents participating in this therapeutic program showed improvement in parents’ reaction to the negative emotions of children with depression.