Evidence-Based Treatment in Practice: PCIT Research on Addressing Individual Differences and Diversity Through the Lens of 20 Years of Service

Abstract

Parent–Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT) is an intensive parent support program for caregivers and their children who exhibit difficult-to-manage disruptive behaviors. After more than four decades of research supporting its efficacy for reducing children’s disruptive behaviors and improving parent–child relationships, PCIT has become one of the most popular and widely disseminated parenting support programs in the world. The evidence for the efficacy of PCIT can be found in many reviews of randomized clinical trials and other rigorous studies. To add to those reviews, our aim was to provide practical guidance on how PCIT can be part of an evidence-based program for families that depends on practitioner expertise, as well as attention to families’ diverse needs. To do this, we describe the evolution of PCIT as practiced in a university-community partnership that has continued for over 20 years, alongside a narrative description of selected and recent findings on PCIT and its use in specific client presentations across four themes. These themes include studies of 1) whether the standard manualized form of PCIT is efficacious across a selection of diverse family situations and child diagnoses, 2) the mechanisms of change that explain why some parents and some children might benefit more or less from PCIT, 3) whether treatment content modifications make PCIT more feasible to implement or acceptable to some families, at the same time as achieving the same or better outcomes, and 4) whether PCIT with structural modifications to the delivery, such as online or intensive delivery, yields similar outcomes as standard PCIT. Finally, we discuss how these directions in research have influenced research and practice, and end with a summary of how the growing attention on parent and child emotion regulation and parents’ responses to (and coaching of) their children’s emotions has become important to PCIT theory and our practice.

Health supervision for children and adolescents with 16p11.2 deletion syndrome

“…This translation is easily missed without an educational specialist or an advocate well versed in both education sciences and the law of the state the child resides in. • Review child's behavior to support the family dynamics and siblings and educate on parent child interaction therapy (Campbell et al 2023). • Provide resources to help navigate community and financial resources including child care.…”

Virtual care delivery of whole family assessment and intervention with infants and preschoolers: a thematic analysis of clinician and family experiences

“…Independent of the recent urgent shift to virtual mental health care, the idea of ‘television‐assisted psychiatry’ had existed for decades (Wittson & Benschoter, 1972), with some of the earliest work in this space including children and families (Dongier et al., 1986). For example, parent–child interaction therapy (PCIT) is a play‐based intervention widely used with young children exhibiting disruptive behaviours (Eyberg & Funderburk, 2011) that has been adapted to virtual care using VTC (Campbell et al., 2023; Garcia et al., 2021; Gurwitch et al., 2020). Treatment is grounded in the caregiver interacting directly with the child, with the therapist acting as a coach (Hood & Eyberg, 2003).…”

“…Prior to the COVID‐19 pandemic, research suggested that such interactional assessment and therapy work lends itself to video teleconferencing (VTC) modalities (Comer et al., 2017; Funderburk et al., 2008; Kohlhoff et al., 2020). Social distancing measures during the pandemic necessitated a rapid transition to virtual mental health care, and clinicians had to swiftly adapt (Campbell et al., 2023; Garcia et al., 2021).…”