The effect of dialectical behavioral therapy group skills training on psychological symptoms and family relations of parents

The primary purpose of this study was to examine the effect of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy Skills Training (DBT-BE) on parental stress of parents with preschool children compared to Cognitive Behavioral Based Psychoeducation (CB-P) and waiting group. Second, this study aimed to examine the effects of DBT on parents' parental burnout, child-parent relationship, emotion regulation difficulties, mindfulness, depression-anxiety-stress and coronavirus anxiety compared to CB-P and waiting group. For this purpose, 52 women who applied to participate in the study and whose parental stress was above the cut point were divided into three groups randomly: 12-week Online DBT Skills Training (DBT-ST), 12-week Online CB-P or Waiting Group. The ages of the participants are between 27 and 41. Each session of DBT-ST, which includes mindfulness, interpersonal effectiveness, emotion regulation and stress tolerance modules, lasted 120 minutes. CB-P, each session lasted for 60 minutes, touched upon the developmental characteristics of preschool children, the emotion-thought-behavior triangle, parenting styles, and problem solving. Demographic Information Form, DSM-5 First Level Cross-sectional Symptom Scale-Adult Form, Parenting Stress Scale, Parent Burnout Assessment, Child-Parent Relationship Scale, Emotion Regulation Difficulty Scale Short Form, Mindful Attention Awareness Scale, Depression-Anxiety- Stress Scale Short Form and Coronavirus Anxiety Scale were used. The pre-test before the application, the post-test at the end of the application, and the follow-up measurements two months after the end of the application were taken from all participants at parallel times. The data of the study were analyzed with Two Way ANOVA for Repeated Measures. As a result of the study, there was a significant decrease in parental stress, parental burnout, depression, and stress scores of DBT-ST participants; a significant increase was found in mindfulness scores. It was found that group and measurement interactions were not significant for child-parent relationship, anxiety and coronavirus anxiety scores, but measurement values were significant. When DBT-ST results were compared with CB-P and waiting groups, no significant difference was observed in all variables for the waiting group, while there was a significant difference in the variables of parental stress, parental burnout, and depression for CB-P group, but this difference was statistically weaker than DBT-BE. The findings were discussed in the light of the literature.