Abstract:

Currently, the Korean government is funding child and adolescent psychological support services which provide the early detection and appropriate treatment of problem behaviors in children. Child and Adolescent psychological support services are supported by the government as part of an initiative to decrease the learning disabilities, conduct disorders, and oppositional defiant disorders in children with behavior problems by supporting the overall development of the child and by helping them with school and social adaptation. Even though the satisfaction rate for the child and adolescent psychological support services is quite high, there were suggestions that there should be specific treatment program models provided for each problem behavior area in order to provide more effective psychological support services. On the other hand, children with ADHD have the highest service utilization rate (more than 30%) of the children utilizing the Korean child and adolescent psychological support services, This is why the current study focused on developing a treatment program for children with ADHD first. It is important to note that previous treatment programs for children with ADHD were primarily programs for the ‘children’ only. However, current research on the treatment of children with ADHD has found that in order to be effective, treatment programs should be appropriate to the child’s age and that parents should participate and work on decreasing problem behavior (Conners, Epstein, March, Angold, Wells, Klaric, 2001). Thus, the purpose of the current study was to develop and evaluate a treatment program focusing on improving the parent-child interaction patterns in the parents and children with ADHD. We developed a program that would help parents learn to interact effectively with their children based on an understanding of the characteristics of children with ADHD. Thirty nine parent-child dyads with children between the ages of 5-6 who had a DSM or ICD diagnosis of ADHD participated for 30 minutes across 8 sessions. Biringen (2003)’s Emotional Availability Scale 4th edition was used pre-and post- to evaluate the effectiveness of the parent-child interaction. The results showed that maternal sensitivity, maternal structuredness, maternal non-intrusiveness and non-hostility scores were higher after treatment. Child responsiveness and child participation increased post-treatment but did not reach statistical significance. In conclusion, we found that the parent-child interaction program for children with ADHD helped the mothers of children with ADHD understand the characteristics of children with ADHD and to practice effective parenting and interaction skills effective in this context, and thus the parent-child interaction treatment program was effective for the mothers.

Keywords:

Parent-child interaction, children with ADHD.