A single session Internet-based cognitive behavioral therapy intervention to help parents cope with children’s anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic: Intervention study (Preprint)

BACKGROUND The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on families’ daily routines and psychosocial well-being, and technology has played a key role in providing socially distanced health care services. OBJECTIVE The objectives of this paper are two-fold. First, to describe the content and delivery of a single-session, Internet-based, cognitive behavioral therapy (ICBT) intervention, which has been developed to help parents cope with children’s anxiety and manage daily situations with their children. Second, to report user adherence and satisfaction among the first participants who completed the intervention. METHODS The Together we’ll manage intervention has been developed by the Department of Child Psychiatry at the University of Turku, Finland. It combines evidence-based CBT elements, such as psychoeducation and skills to manage anxiety, with parent training programs that strengthen how parents interact with their child and handle daily situations. A pre-post design was used to examine user satisfaction and the skills the parents learned. Participants were recruited using advertisements, media activity, day care centers and schools, and asked about background characteristics, emotional symptoms and parenting practices before they underwent the ICBT. After they completed the seven themes, they were asked what new parenting skills they had learned from the ICBT and how satisfied they were with the program. RESULTS Of the 602 participants who filled in the baseline survey, 205 (34%) completed the program’s seven themes and 189 (31%) completed the post-intervention survey. Most of the participants were satisfied with the program (73%) and had learned skills that eased both their anxiety (75%) and their children’s (83%). The majority (83%) reported that they learned how to organize their daily routines better and just over half (53%) said the program improved how they planned each day with their children. CONCLUSIONS The single-session ICBT helped parents to face the psychological demands of the COVID-19 pandemic. Future studies should determine how the participation rate and adherence can be optimized in digital, universal interventions. This will help to determine what kinds of programs should be developed, including their content and delivery.