Comparative Effects of Mindfulness and Skills-Based Parent Training Programs for

Parents of children with autism are documented to report high levels of stress compared to parents of typically developing children, children with chronic illnesses, and children with other developmental disorders. Previous research has indicated both parent-focused and child-focused parent training programs as effective in alleviating parental stress and enhancing meaningful parent-child interactions. Programs that include behavioral skills training are especially represented in the current literature. However, excluding general psychoeducation there is no consistent model for parent-focused groups. In the present study, a behavioral skills approach was compared to one parent-oriented model, a mindfulness group. Mindfulness encompasses several strategies that encourage staying physically, emotionally, and thoughtfully present in the moment, and discourages avoiding distressing thoughts, feelings, and situations. This approach has been beneficial to individuals with a variety of physical and psychological ailments, and has been suggested preliminarily to be appropriate for parents of children on the autism spectrum. Ten parents of children with autism were matched on a measure of parental stress and ii