NCT05584059

Pai.ACT Programme for Parents of Children With Special Healthcare Needs - Phase I

Pai.ACT: A Deep-Learning Mental Health Advisory System Using Acceptance and Commitment Therapy for Parents of Children With Special Healthcare Needs (Phase I)

• Status: Recruiting
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 150 (estimated)
• Sponsor: Chinese University of Hong Kong · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 21 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

This study aims to determine the feasibility, acceptability and potential efficacy of an individual, video-conferencing based Focused Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (FACT) on the mental well-being of parents of children with Special Health Care Needs(SHCN). The study also aims to explore the experience of parents after participating in the individual-based FACT sessions offered by the trained FACT interventionists.

Detailed description

Parents of children with Special Health Care Needs (SHCN) have always been under tremendous pressure to care for their children. They have been experiencing significant caregiving difficulties, such as scheduling and accompanying multiple follow-ups for rehabilitation and functional recovery and managing the child's symptoms and problematic behaviours. With the strike of COVID-19, these parents' stress may even be exacerbated due to the lockdown measures. Children's needs become more demanding with the suspension of the usual care services. Parenting stress has been known to affect parent-child interactions and increase negative parenting behaviours such as harsh, permissive or neglecting parenting impairing the parent's capacity to respond to the demands of the child's illness, which may, in turn, exacerbate the child's health problem and well-being. Recent evidence has advocated the efficacy of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) on mental health in different population groups, including healthy individuals, parents, children and those with mental health problems. To increase the reach of ACT and overcome the plausible disruptions of mental health services arising from the pandemic, the study proposes to use an innovative intervention approach, that is a brief version of ACT (Focused ACT), delivered by trained FACT interventionists in individual-based, video-conferencing format. The conversation data between the parent and the interventionist will be further analyzed for developing a Deep-Learning Mental Health Advisory System in the second phase of the Pai.ACT project. This study aims to determine the feasibility, acceptability and potential efficacy of an individual, video-conferencing-based Focused Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (FACT) on the mental well-being of parents of children with Special Health Care Needs(SHCN). The study also aims to explore the experience of parents after participating in the individual-based FACT sessions offered by the trained FACT interventionists.

Conditions

• Neurodevelopmental Disorders
• Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
• Autism Spectrum Disorder
• Development Delay
• Chronic Disease

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
BEHAVIORAL	Focused Acceptance and Commitment Therapy	This is an individual-based FACT counselling programme which composes of 4-6 sessions on a weekly basis (45-60mins/session). All the sessions are delivered by a trained FACT interventionist via either video-conferencing (e.g., Zoom or Windows Teams) or face-to-face format. The programme aims to increase the psychological flexibility of the parent, so that he/she is able to (i) experience the present moment and take perspective on self (i.e., Awareness); (ii) detach the distressing private experiences and associated rules and to take a non-judgemental, accepting stance toward the painful experiences (i.e., Openness) and (iii) exhibits strong connection with values and commit to values-consistent actions. The trained interventionist will use different ACT strategies in these sessions, including ACT metaphors, experiential exercises, guided mindfulness exercises, guided imagery exercises and values clarification exercises to reinforce the above principles.

Timeline

• Start date: 2022-12-01
• Primary completion: 2025-12-31
• Completion: 2025-12-31
• First posted: 2022-10-18
• Last updated: 2025-08-11

Locations

5 sites across 1 country: Hong Kong