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UPI: Abusive mothers can improve parenting

UPI covered the research of SMU psychologists Ernest Jouriles, Renee McDonald, David Rosenfield and Deborah Corbitt-Shindler in a July 30 story “Abusive mothers can improve parenting.”

UPI covered the research of SMU psychologists Ernest Jouriles, Renee McDonald, David Rosenfield and Deborah Corbitt-Shindler in a July 30 story “Abusive mothers can improve parenting.”

EXCERPT:

DALLAS, July 30 (UPI) — Abusive mothers, who are taught parenting skills and given emotional support, can improve their parenting skills, two U.S. researchers say.

Ernest Jouriles and Renee McDonald of Southern Methodist University in Dallas say parenting improved in impoverished, neglectful, abusive mothers after home visits, classes and emotional support from therapists.

The study, published in the Journal of Family Psychology, says large improvements in mothers’ parenting were observed in families given instruction and emotional support compared to families that did not receive the services.

Jouriles is professor and chairman of the SMU Psychology Department. McDonald and Rosenfield are associate professors. Corbitt-Shindler is a psychology department doctoral candidate.

Read the full story:Abusive mothers can improve parenting

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Abusive mothers improve their parenting after home visits, classes and emotional support from therapists

Mothers who live in poverty and who have abused their children can stop if they are taught parenting skills and given emotional support.

A new study has found that mothers in families in which there is a history of child abuse and neglect were able to reduce how much they cursed at, yelled at, slapped, spanked, hit or rejected their children after a series of home visits from therapists who taught them parenting skills.

There were large improvements in mothers’ parenting in families that received the intensive services, compared to families that did not receive the services, according to SMU psychologists Ernest Jouriles and Renee McDonald at Southern Methodist University in Dallas, two of the study’s eight authors.

As a result of the intensive, hands-on training, the women in the study said they felt they did a better job managing their children’s behavior, said Jouriles and McDonald. The mothers also were observed to use better parenting strategies, and the families were less likely to be reported again for child abuse.

“Although there are many types of services for addressing child maltreatment, there is very little scientific data about whether the services actually work,” said McDonald. “This study adds to our scientific knowledge and shows that this type of service can actually work.”

Help for violent families
The parenting training is part of a program called Project Support, developed at the Family Research Center at SMU and designed to help children in severely violent families.

The study appears in the current issue of the quarterly Journal of Family Psychology. The article is titled “Improving Parenting in Families Referred for Child Maltreatment: A Randomized Controlled Trial Examining Effects of Project Support.” SMU psychologist David Rosenfield also authored the study.

The research was funded by the federal Interagency Consortium on Violence Against Women and Violence Within the Family, along with the Texas-based Hogg Foundation for Mental Health.

“Child maltreatment is such an important and costly problem in our society that it seems imperative to make sure that our efforts — and the tax dollars that pay for them — are actually solving the problem,” said Jouriles. He and McDonald are co-founders and co-directors of the SMU Family Research Center.

In 2007, U.S. child welfare agencies received more than 3 million reports of child abuse and neglect, totaling almost 6 million children, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Poor and single with children
The study worked with 35 families screened through the Texas child welfare agency Child Protective Services, CPS. The parents had abused or neglected their children at least once, but CPS determined it best the family stay together and receive services to improve parenting and end the maltreatment.

In all the families, the mother was legal guardian and primary caregiver and typically had three children. On average she was 28, single and had an annual income of $10,300. Children in the study ranged from 3 to 8 years old.

Half the families in the study received Project Support parenting education and support. The other half received CPS’s conventional services.

New parenting skills + help
Mental health service providers met with the 17 Project Support families weekly in their homes for up to 6 months.

During that time, mothers, and often their husbands or partners, were taught 12 specific skills, including how to pay attention and play with their children, how to listen and comfort them, how to offer praise and positive attention, how to give appropriate instructions and commands, and how to respond to misbehavior.

Also, therapists provided the mothers with emotional support and helped them access materials and resources through community agencies as needed, such as food banks and Medicaid. The therapists also helped mothers evaluate the adequacy and safety of the family’s living arrangements, the quality of their child-care arrangements and how to provide enough food with so little money.

Services provided to families receiving traditional child welfare services varied widely. The range of services included parenting classes at a church or agency, family therapy or individual counseling, videotaped parenting instruction, anger-management help, GED classes and contact by social workers in person or by phone.

Fewer recurrences of abuse
Only 5.9 percent of the families trained through Project Support were later referred to CPS for abuse, compared with almost 28 percent of the control group, the researchers found.

“The results of this study have important implications for the field of child maltreatment,” said SMU’s Rosenfield.

Project Support was launched in 1996 to address the mental health problems of maltreated children and children exposed to domestic violence, both of which often lead to considerable problems for children later in life, such as substance abuse, interpersonal violence and criminal activity. Previous studies have shown the program can improve children’s psychological adjustment as well as mothers’ ability to parent their children appropriately and effectively, according to the researchers.

Project Support: A promising practice
With funding from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, Project Support has been included in a study evaluating 15 “promising practices” nationally for helping children who live in violent families.

Jouriles is professor and chairman of the SMU Psychology Department. McDonald and Rosenfield are associate professors.

Other researchers were William Norwood, University of Houston; Laura Spiller, Midwestern State University; Nanette Stephens, University of Texas; Deborah Corbitt-Shindler, SMU; and Miriam Ehrensaft, City University of New York.

SMU is a private university in Dallas where nearly 11,000 students benefit from the national opportunities and international reach of SMU’s seven degree-granting schools. For more information see www.smuresearch.com.

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Children’s sense of threat from parental fighting determines trauma symptoms

artist-dolls-fighting.jpgIf children feel threatened by even very low levels of violence between their parents, they may be at increased risk for developing trauma symptoms, new research suggests.

A study by psychologists at SMU found that children who witness violence between their mother and her intimate partner report fewer trauma symptoms if they don’t perceive the violence as threatening.

The research highlights the importance of assessing how threatened a child feels when his or her parents are violent toward one another, and how that sense of threat may be linked to symptoms of trauma.

Children’s perception of threat determines any trauma
“Our results indicated a relation between children’s perception of threat and their trauma symptoms in a community sample reporting relatively low levels of violence,” said Deborah Corbitt-Shindler, a doctoral candidate in the psychology department at SMU. “The results of the study suggest that even very low levels of violence, if interpreted as threatening by children, can influence the development of trauma symptoms in children.”

The researchers presented their findings February 24 at the “National Summit on Interpersonal Violence and Abuse Across the Lifespan: Forging a Shared Agenda” in Dallas. The scientific conference was sponsored by the National Partnership to End Interpersonal Violence Across the Lifespan.

iStock-paperdoll-hearts.jpgFamily violence experts estimate that more than half of children exposed to intimate partner violence experience trauma symptoms, such as bad dreams, nightmares and trying to forget about the fights.

SMU study surveyed Dallas area families
The SMU study of 532 children and their mothers looked at the link between intimate partner violence and trauma symptoms in children. The families were recruited from communities in the urban Dallas area. The National Institute of Mental Health funded the research.

In the study, mothers were asked to describe any violent arguments they’d had with their intimate partners, and they were asked about trauma symptoms they may have experienced because of the violence.

Similarly, the children in the study, age 7 to 10 years old, were asked to appraise how threatened they felt by the violence they witnessed, and about trauma symptoms they may have experienced because of the violence. The researchers defined “threat” as the extent to which children are concerned that: a family member might be harmed, the stability of the family is threatened, or a parent won’t be able to care for them.

Trauma: Nightmares, bad dreams, trying to forget
To assess trauma, children were asked questions such as if they’ve had bad dreams or nightmares about their mom’s and dad’s arguments or fights; if thoughts of the arguments or fights ever just pop into their mind; if they ever try to forget all about the arguments and fights; and if they ever wish they could turn off feelings that remind them of the arguments and fights.

The SMU researchers found that even when mothers reported an episode of intimate partner violence, their children reported fewer trauma symptoms when they didn’t view the episode as threatening. Although a mother’s emotions sometimes affect their children’s emotions, in this study the mothers’ trauma symptoms were unrelated to the children’s traumatic responses to the violence.

Corbitt-Shindler conducted the study in conjunction with her faculty advisers — Renee McDonald, associate professor, and Ernest Jouriles, professor and chair of the SMU Psychology Department. Additional co-authors of the study were SMU clinical psychology doctoral candidates Erica Rosentraub and Laura Minze; and Rachel Walker, SMU psychology department research assistant. — Margaret Allen

Related links:
SMU Family Research Center
SMU Psychology Department
Deborah Corbitt-Shindler
Renee McDonald
Ernest Jouriles