Abstract
Aim: The aim of this
study was to determine the anxiety levels of parents with children aged
3-6 years due to the COVID 19 pandemic and to examine the effects of
Solution Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) applied to parents with high level
of anxiety.
Methods : The study was conducted as a parallel-group,
randomized controlled design. The sample of the study consisted of 77
parents who were randomly assigned to the experimental and control
groups (control group n = 40; intervention group n = 37). One session of
online SFBT was applied to the intervention group each week and 4
sessions were applied in total. No intervention was applied to the
control group. The data were collected using introductory information
form and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI). SPSS programme and
Analysis of Moment Structures (AMOS) 23 application were used in the
analysis of the data. Structural equation modeling was used to examine
a hypothesized model that SFBT has both direct and indirect effects on
anxiety levels of parents.
Results: The state and trait anxiety mean scores of the
intervention group decreased compared to the pre-intervention mean
scores after the implemented programme. While this difference between
state anxiety scores was statistically significant (p≤ .001), the
difference between trait anxiety scores was not statistically
significant (p> .05). There was no statistically
significant difference between the pre-test and post-test STAI-S and
STAI-T total scores of the control group.
Conclusions: In the study, it has been found that SFBT applied
to parents with high level of anxiety is an effective method in reducing
the state anxiety levels of parents.
Clinical trial number: NCT04609722 (Registration date:
30.10.2020)
Key words: Anxiety, pandemic, parent, Solution Focused Brief
Therapy