Cognitive Behaviour Therapy

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy for Stress- Related Problems: Two Single- Case Studies of Parents of Children with Disabilities

By: Malin Anclair and Arto J. Hiltunen

Introduction

• A case study was conducted on two mothers who have sons with autism/Aspergers syndrome to determine if Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) could be an effective aid in reducing stress-related problems.

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

• A form of short-term psychotherapy that focuses on examining the relationships between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
• The treatment was originally used to treat depression but now used on multiple mental illnesses (anxiety, eating disorders, stress, social problems, etc).

Continued

• Some CBT methods include: cognitive restructuring, discriminative learning, identification of triggers/consequence analysis, problem solving, etc.
• In a recently completed study by Eccleston et al. (2012), CBT for parents of children with chronic illnesses was proven to be an effective method of reducing the children’s pain.

However...

• HOWEVER...

Video time!

Purpose of the study

• To show that CBT methods could effectively reduce stress and improve mental health among parents caring for chronically ill children.

What kind of study is it?

• Exploratory: it focused on a previously unstudied group of parents of children with disorders.

Design of the study

• Consisted of 2 case studies in which they were qualitatively analyzed through treatments and quantitatively analyzed with the Shirom- Melamed Burnout Questionnaire, which determines mental fatigue, cognitive weariness, tension, and listlessness in the form of four subscales and 22 questions, to determine the progress of the women studied.

Importance of study

• It is valuable to the parent group and would enable them to give adequate support to their children, thus making it easier for the children to live with their chronic illness or disorder.

Case I

• 47 year old married woman
• Son age 12, diagnosed with autism/Aspergers syndrome
• Woman claims to be increasingly exhausted, sleeping worse
• Wants strategies to enable her to cope with everyday life
• Her condition was classified as under-stimulation

Case II

• 45 year old single mother
• Son age 16, diagnosed with autism/Aspergers syndrome
• Has been on sick leave due to depression and stress
• Her condition was classified as anxiety

Follow - up

• Case I - no information available
• Case II - after four months
• Patient was doing relatively well

Results

• CBT was proven to be an effective tool to reduce stress and stress-related problems for parents of children with autism/Aspergers syndrome.

DISCUSSION