The Good Enough Parenting early intervention schema therapy based program: Participant experience.

Area of Science:

• Psychology
• Clinical Psychology
• Developmental Psychology

Background:

• Schema therapy (ST) is a validated treatment for psychopathology.
• ST emphasizes meeting children's core emotional needs by caregivers.
• The Good Enough Parenting program is an early intervention designed to help parents meet these needs.

Purpose of the Study:

• To explore the patient experience of parents participating in the Good Enough Parenting program.
• To gather insights for program development and future research.

Main Methods:

• Exploratory qualitative study involving 55 parent-participants.
• One-to-one interviews using critical incident technique and semi-structured schedules.
• Thematic analysis of interview transcripts with high inter-rater reliability (kappa=0.78).

Main Results:

• Key themes emerged: Cultivating Awareness of Parents' Own Schemas, Cultivating Intentionality, Working through Developmental Issues, Responses to Challenges at Home, Performing Multiple Roles, and the Learning Process.
• Participants overwhelmingly reported satisfaction with the program across these themes.

Conclusions:

• The findings support the continued development of the Good Enough Parenting program.
• Participant-reported outcome measures are suitable for future randomized controlled trials.