Effectiveness of a Mentalization-Based Intervention on Parenting Stress and Family Health: A Randomized Clinical Trial

Abstract

Introduction and Aim: The health of parents and the reduction of their stress play an important role in the strength and health of the family. Therefore, the present research was conducted with the aim of determine the effectiveness of a mentalization-based intervention on parenting stress and family health.

Methodology: The present study was a quasi-experimental with a pretest, posttest, and five-month follow-up design, which was conducted as a randomized clinical trial in two experimental and control groups. The research sample was 30 parents of Tehran city in 2024 year after reviewing the inclusion criteria, who were selected using purposive sampling method and randomly assigned into two groups of 15 people. The experimental group underwent 8 sessions of 75 to 90 minutes of mentalization-based intervention, and the control group remained on the waiting list for training. Data collection tools included the Stresses of Parenting Questionnaire (Abidin, 1990) and Family Health Scale (Crandall et al., 2020). The data of this study were analyzed using analysis of variance with repeated measures and Bonferroni post hoc test in SPSS-27 software.

Findings: The results of the present study showed that the mentalization-based intervention significantly reduced parenting stress and significantly increased family health, and the results were maintained at the follow-up stage (P<0.001).

Conclusion: The results of this study indicated the effective role of mentalization-based intervention in reducing parenting stress and increasing family health. Therefore, counselors and psychologists can use the mentalization-based intervention method along with other effective intervention methods to improve family health.