The Efficacy of Filial Therapy on Reducing Mother's Stress with Children with Externalizing Disorder

The present study is planned to investigate the efficacy of filial thera-py on reducing mother stress with six and seven years old sons with externa-lizing disorders in Iran. In this single subject study, six mothers whose chil-dren according to their scores on the Child Behavior Checklist are above the normal range were selected in jud-gmental sampling method. Before intervention initiation, parents were evaluated by “Parenting Stress Inventory-Short Form” to establish a baseline three times with a 3-week interval between each session. Then participant attended nine weekly one-hour and half group session. At third, sixth, and ninth sessions, partici-pant was evaluated once more. At the end of the treatment intervention they were tested again, twice with two weeks interval. Repeated measures were used in order to determine the effectiveness of treatment on the entire descent group member too. Examinati-on of diagrams indicates that all participants expect two subjects, show significant changes in mother’s stress. So, an observed percentage recovery between 0.04% to 23% was found with an average to high effect size. However, results did not reach to significant level for two participants who did not complete the process of intervention. In repeated measure test with Huynh-Felt test, results indicate that filial therapy is effective for redu-cing mother’s stress with six and seven years old sons with externalizi-ng disorder (p<0.012).