Grant: Doctoral Award - Frederick Banting and Charles Best Canada Graduate Scholarships

Behavioural parent training is an established treatment for children with ADHD to address their behavioural, academic, and social difficulties. Such programs teach parents to implement clear expectations and use strategies to encourage appropriate behaviour from their children. However, parents' own mental health often affects their ability to effectively carry out this treatment for their children. Parents of children with ADHD are likely to have mental health concerns, leaving these children at risk of not maximally benefitting from these treatments. The first aim of this research seeks to determine why parent mental health appears to affect treatment outcomes (e.g., difficulty implementing the strategies, lack of engagement, lack of perceived social support). The findings of the first aim will inform the second aim, which is to develop and test a modified behavioural parent training program to additionally address parent mental health. Determining why parent mental health leads to poorer treatment outcomes will determine what needs to be included in this modification to support parents. This modification will be piloted by recruiting parents of children with ADHD who have mental health concerns. Parents will participate in behavioural parent training as usual or the modified version. Treatment engagement and parent/child functioning will be measured to determine if the modifications are associated with improved health. Parents of children with ADHD take on the important role of implementing behavioural treatment for their children, therefore, parent mental health must be considered to maximize treatment benefit and to better support child mental health. By taking the unique approach of supporting parent mental health within the existing structure of parent training, instead of providing additional/separate parent treatment, this research will be an important contribution to the field of child mental health and family functioning.