Safety, Feasibility, Fidelity, and Perceived Benefits of an Intervention for Parents with Mood Disorders and Their Children — “Let’s Talk About Children” in Japan

ABSTRACT

In Japan, there is no evidence-based intervention for parents with mental illness that is designed to support the patient in parenting and to prevent disorders in their children. The aim of this study was to evaluate the safety, feasibility and perceived benefits of using the Let’s Talk About Children program from Finland for parents with mood disorders in Japan before carrying out a more formal clinical trial. Nine parents with mood disorders whose children were aged 8–16 years old without a history of mental illness participated in the program. The Let’s Talk About Children program was carried out between a researcher/practitioner and participants during a preliminary discussion and two discussions. The program was conducted with a 1-week to 1-month interval between discussion one and discussion two. All participants completed the intervention, and interventions were conducted with fidelity. In terms of intervention safety, no one reported a harmful experience, and the participants reported considerable benefits from the intervention. Most parents reported that their well-being and self-acceptance changed positively. Parents reported more confidence in parenting and fewer worries about their children. All participants reported that their treatment motivation was positively changed and that they had experienced the intervention as very helpful or useful. The results are consistent with those in a corresponding Finnish study. The results suggest that the Let’s Talk About Children program is feasible for use with Japanese parents with mood disorders, and a clinical trial can be recommended.

KEYWORDS:

• Family-focused intervention named Let’s Talk About Children
• safety
• feasibility
• perceived benefits
• mood disorders

Acknowledgments

We thank the participants for their contribution to the research. The work was made possible by the collaboration of the Department of Psychiatry, Tokyo Medical University. We are grateful to Ms. Bitta Söderblom for contributing the training of the Let’s Talk About Children and to Dr. Yasuyuki Ono for contributing to recruitment coordination.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C) (Grant Number: JP 26463394).