No abstract

This investigation studied the relationship between mothers (S = 32) who perceive their child as exhibiting behavior problems, their reported daily experience of social support contacts, and the observed rate of prosocial mother-child interactions. Notable, and of clinical relevance, was the finding that mothers who perceived their children as acting out were observed to experience significantly fewer prosocial mother-child interactions on days that these mothers reported low levels of social support contact. Implications toward primary prevention and treatment are discussed.

Reviewers of psychotherapy outcome research have expressed concerns about the methodological rigor of published research. In this article, psychotherapy outcome studies (n = 142) published in 21 journals between 1978 and 1985 were reviewed. The results failed to indicate any significant overall improvements or deterioration. Recommendations are made for the future development and employment of the evaluative criteria used in this article.

We examined the effectiveness of behavioural family therapy (following the treatment agenda outlined in Fleischman, Horne and Arthur, 1983) and brief family therapy (following the procedures outlined in Fisch, Weakland and Segal, 1985), in the treatment of child psychological disorders. The parents of the 49 children referred to the outpatient unit of a children's hospital completed the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) (Achenbach and Edelbrock, 1983). Three scales of the CBCL were examined to assess the effectiveness of the two therapeutic approaches pre-to post-treatment. Significant pre-and post-treatment differences were found for behavioural family therapy on the Internalizing, Externalizing, and Sum T scales and for brief family therapy on the Internalizing and Sum T scales. Sum T scales represent the sum of scores across all sub-scales of the CBCL. Neither treatment was found to be more effective than the other.