The Effectiveness of Barkley's Parent Training on Social Skills of Students with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder

Abstract

Background: Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) damages the children’s communicative and social performance. Therefore, the present study was conducted to investigate the effectiveness of Barkley’s parental training on social skills of students with ADHD. Methods: This random trial was conducted on primary school students with ADHD in Isfahan in academic year 2016 - 2017. As a result, 40 students with ADHD were selected from primary school students with ADHD via clustered random sampling method and were randomly categorized into case and control groups. The parents in the case group received fifteen sixty-minute therapeutic interventions in two months. The applied questionnaires included ADHD questionnaire and social skills questionnaire. The data were analyzed using ANCOVA method. Results: The results showed that Barkley’s parental training had significant effect on social skills of students with ADHD (P-value < 0.001) so that this therapy could improve social skills in ADHD students. Conclusion: According to the findings, it can be concluded that Barkley’s parental training can be applied as an efficient treatment to improve social skills of ADHD children by modifying parents’ interactional and parental model.