NCT04885036

Effectiveness of Emotion Focused Skills Training (EFST)

An RCT Study Investigating the Effectiveness of Emotion Focused Skills Training (EFST)

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 72 (actual)
• Sponsor: Sorlandet Hospital HF · Other Government
• Sex: All
• Age: 6 Years – 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

Comparing the effectivity of an EFST parent supervision intervention against Treatment As Usual in an outpatient specialist health care clinics Family unit.

Detailed description

The aim of this study is to compare two different treatment conditions and their effect on the mental health of children and adolescent clients. The first condition is the typical mental health treatment offered when the family is motivated to receive family based interventions in the clinic, thus, treatment as usual TAU as provided by the cliniques family team. A prior study, including data from the same clinic, found that the TAU was associated with good outcomes, identifying effect sizes equal to what is usual in clinical studies The second condition, labelled: EFST intervention is a parent guidance intervention delivered as a two-day intensive group course followed by six weekly guidance sessions for parents of children with mental health issues. Both treatment conditions are currently delivered at the clinic and by randomly assigning clients to each of these we will be able to compare the effects they have on the mental health of children and adolescents. The results will possibly guide what treatments to offer in the future.

Conditions

• Mental Health Issue

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	EFST intervention	EFST extended intervention is a stand-alone treatment that consist of a two days EFST group course followed by six weekly individual sessions of parental guidance by a licensed EFST therapist. The treatment is given indirectly to the child through work with the parent, thus it might remove or diminish the pressure on the children that suffer from mental health problems to solve their disorder themselves. In this condition a total of 19 hours of EFST treatment is provided.
BEHAVIORAL	Treatment As Usual	In the TAU condition, the families will receive treatment as usual that does not include EFST treatment. Recent research indicates that this is therapy of high quality carried out by highly qualified staff (Tilden et al., 2020; Zahl-Olsen et al., 2020).The therapists are educated psychologists, psychiatrist and family therapists. The TAU intends to be the best treatment for the child/ family based on the type of symptoms presented and requests from the patient and his/her family. We will measure the intensity and type of therapy given in this condition by information from the therapists and investigate that it did not include the main elements of EFST treatment.

Timeline

• Start date: 2021-12-08
• Primary completion: 2024-04-24
• Completion: 2024-12-22
• First posted: 2021-05-13
• Last updated: 2025-06-05

Locations

1 site across 1 country: Norway