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Parenting anxious teens: An ACT approach to what works

Parentalidade de adolescentes ansiosos: Um abordagem ACT ao que funciona

Reference
2023.14396.PEX
Project Start Date
2025-01-01
Project End Date
2026-12-31
Principal Investigator
Scientific Area
Social sciences
Funding Program
Concurso de Projetos Exploratórios em Todos os Domínios Científicos 2023

Abstract

Anxiety-related symptoms have been increasingly experienced by adolescents as early as 15 years old and associate with long-lasting impairment. Those symptoms have consistently been linked to rearing practices that may sustain (e.g., behavioral control) or help to cope with (e.g., autonomy granting) adolescent anxiety. In turn, those parental actsmay reflect the parents’ psychological inflexibility (PsyInf; i.e., rigid attempts to escape or avoid difficult internal experiences) or flexibility (PsyFlex; i.e., flexible workable and meaningful actions in the presence of difficult internal experiences). Such psychological processes are at the core of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), both as a conceptual and intervention approach. Still, previous works have either failed to provide empirical evidence on conceptualizing parental (un)workable acts in relation to ACT processes or in using ACT to promote workable and meaningful acts within parent-adolescent dyads who are coping with adolescent anxiety. The current research project intends to address those gaps by working with parent-adolescent dyads to understand which parental acts seem to be associated with how adolescent cope with anxiety (Study 1) and to develop and explore the usability and helpfulness of the ACT2ParenTeens web-based intervention (Study 2). Study 1 will use a mixed-method design to address the following research question: How do parent-adolescents dyads work to cope with adolescents’ anxiety? Quantitative data will be collected first from a community sample of parent-adolescent dyads (n ? 125 dyads for n ? 250 participants; Phase 1); both parent and adolescents will report on the adolescent’s anxiety, their own PsyFlex, and the parents’ rearing practices. Dyads whose adolescents present self-reported elevated anxiety will be eligible for a purposeful sample (n ? 12 dyads for n ? 24 participants; Phase 2) where both parents and adolescents will be interviewed individually on their perceptions of (un)workable parental acts in relation to adolescents’ anxiety. We expect to find convergent results of PsyFlex/PsyInf impacting on rearing practices, which in turn will impact on adolescents’ anxiety, both via results from a mediation model analyses and from reflexive thematic analyses. A user-centered design (UCD) approach will then be used to develop the ACT2ParenTeens web-based intervention. Specifically, besides the information described above, dyads in Phase 2 will be interviewed individually about their preferences, needs, constraints and appraisal of intervention materials, sequence and intended functionalities. The intervention will be iteratively developed to consist of two intervention profiles, one for parents (i.e., ACT2Parent) and one for adolescents (i.e., ACT2Teens), targeting parent-adolescent dyads individually but simultaneously. Study 2 will resort to ACT2ParenTeens to address the following research question: Can a web-based ACT intervention be useable and helpful to parent-adolescent dyads who are coping with adolescents’ anxiety? Participants in Phase 2 will now be invited to Phase 3, wherein they will be randomly assigned to an intervention or to a wait-list condition (n ? 6 dyads for n ? 12 participants for each condition) and asked to provide self-reported data at pre- and post-intervention on the adolescents’ anxiety, their own PsyFlex, and the parents’ rearing practices. Participants in the intervention condition will also be asked qualitative appraisal of the ACT2ParenTeens usability and helpfulness.  We expect dyads in the intervention condition to fare better than those who were wait-listed, and that they will perceive the intervention to be usable and helpful. The methodologies to be employed in this work will allow for a deeper and holistic understanding of parent-adolescent dyads, specifically regarding how they interact in relation to adolescent anxiety. Such an approach to parenting, and to parenting anxious adolescents in specific, has not been done before. In addition to producing new knowledge on what works when parenting anxious adolescents, this research will make available a tailored, easy-to-use, and accessible psychological intervention tool that may continuously contribute to the sustainable development goal of good health and well-being for all. The research teams’ previous experience guarantees the implementation of this project. PV has extensive experience and training in intervening in adolescent social anxiety, also from an ACT perspective and resorting to technology. She also has previous successful experience in leading research teams. JS has focused her work on mixed and qualitative methodologies applied to the analysis of how caregiving impacts on child development and on how to inform optimization of psychotherapeutic intervention and change. Finally, RS has experience in UCD approaches to development of digitally-mediated intervention, also towards concepts related to mental health.

Institutions

Main Institutions

  • Universidade de Aveiro (UA)

Other Institutions

  • Universidade Portucalense Infante Dom Henrique (UPT)

Funding 49.992,03 €

Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT) - Portugal

49.992,03 €