The effectiveness of a family-friendly program on parental meta-worry beliefs and health anxiety and social anxiety disorder in children

• Published in: Current psychology (New Brunswick, N.J.) Vol. 42; no. 13; pp. 11344 - 11354
• Main Authors: Rahmani, N., Teymuri, S., Bayazi, M. H., Rajaei, A. R.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01-05-2023; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Anxiety disorders; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Families & family life; Psychology; Social anxiety; Social Sciences; Teenagers; Family-Friendly Program; Social Anxiety Disorder; Health Anxiety; Meta-Worry Beliefs
• ISSN: 1046-1310; 1936-4733
• DOI: 10.1007/s12144-021-02423-x

Social Anxiety disorders (SAD) of children and adolescents and parental meta-worry beliefs (PMWB), and parental health anxiety (PHA) are the cause of many functional disorders. This study aimed to investigate the effect of the family-friendly program (FFP) on reducing PMWB and PHA also SAD in children and adolescents. The present study was a semi-experimental study in which the pretest–posttest with the control group was utilized. The statistical population of this study consisted of all children and adolescents who had social anxiety themselves and their parents who were anxious and referred to the psychiatric and psychological clinic of Soroush center in Mashhad. In this study, subjects were randomly divided into two groups: test (n = 30) and control groups (n = 30). The test group, along with regular medical care, received the personal intervention program in 11 weekly sessions of 1 h. The control group received only regular medical care in this period. Subjects in both groups responded to the Anxiety Thought Questionnaire of Wells (AnTI) and the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Disorder-71 (SCARED-71) (to diagnose the social disorder in children and adolescents), before intervention (pretest) and immediately after the intervention (posttest). ANCOVA test via SPSS 23 showed that in the post-test stage, the mean scores of PMWB, PHA, and SAD in children and adolescents in the test group were significantly lower than the control group. Teaching FFP affects reducing PMWB and PHA and also SAD in children and adolescents. The implication of FFP can significantly improve the quality of life and prevent or alleviate anxiety, and stress among family members.