Clinical Strategies for Enhancing Generalization in Behavioural Parent Training: An Overview

Abstract

Behavioural parent training as a treatment approach for conduct disordered children and their families has been a remarkably successful endeavour. However, both clinical experience and research findings have shown that some families can be considerably more difficult to treat than others. Families in which there is significant marital disharmony, maternal depression, low income, and lack of support networks, often drop out from treatment and fail to generalize or maintain treatment gains. This paper explores some of the potential ecological obstacles to programming generalization and maintenance effects in parent training. It also reviews a range of clinical strategies that can be employed to facilitate generalization effects in families. It is argued that if generalization enhancement strategies are to be effective they need to be derived from a fine grained functional analysis of each parent's ecological environment and individually tailored to that setting.