Parent–Child Interaction Therapy for Mexican Americans: A Randomized Clinical Trial

Abstract

This study compared the effectiveness of a culturally modified version of Parent–Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), called Guiando a Niños Activos (GANA), to the effectiveness of standard PCIT and Treatment as Usual (TAU) for young Mexican Amerian children with behavior problems. Fifty-eight Mexican Amerian families whose 3- to 7-year-old child had a clinically significant behavior problems were randomly assigned to GANA, standard PCIT, or TAU. All three treatment approaches produced significant pre–post improvement in conduct problems across a wide variety of parent-report measures. GANA produced results that were significantly superior to TAU across a wide variety of both parent report and observational indices; however, GANA and PCIT did not differ significantly from one another. PCIT was superior to TAU on two of the parent report indices and almost all of the observational indices. There were no significant differences between the three groups on treatment dropout, and families were more satisfied with both GANA and PCIT than with TAU.

This research was supported by National Institute of Mental Health grant K01MH01924 to Kristen McCabe.

Notes

Note. GANA = Guiando a Niños Activos; PCIT = Parent–Child Interaction Therapy; TAU = Treatment as Usual.

N = 58.

Note. Means with the same subscripts were not significantly different from one another. Means with different subscripts were significantly different from one another. GANA = Guiando a Niños Activos; PCIT = Parent–Child Interaction Therapy; TAU = Treatment as Usual; ECBI = Eyberg Child Behavior Inventory; ODD = oppositional defiant disorder; CD = conduct disorder; ADHD = attention deficit hyperactivity disorder; CBCL = Child Behavior Checklist; Extern. = Externalizing; Dysfunc. Inter. = Dysfunctional Interaction; PSI = Parenting Stress Index..

Note. Means with the same subscripts were not significantly different from one another. Means with different subscripts were significantly different from one another. “Do” skills include labeled praise, behavioral descriptions, and reflection of child speech. “Don't” skills include questions, commands, and criticisms. GANA = Guiando a Niños Activos; PCIT = Parent–Child Interaction Therapy; TAU = Treatment as Usual; DPICS = Dyadic Parent Child Interaction Coding System; CLP = child-led play; PLP = parent-led play.