Programa de habilidades sociais educativas com pais : efeitos sobre o desempenho social e acadêmico de filhos com TDAH

Abstract

Attention Deficit and Hyperactivity/Impulsitivity Disorder (ADHD) children frequently show problems in the social interaction what results in social, emotional and academic impairment. Programs developed to teach educative social skills to parents of ADHD children can contribute to the change of this behavior pattern. The proposal of this study was to evaluate the effects of a training in Educative Social Skills program for parents of ADHD children, focusing both on its internal and external validity. The sample was composed by 16 mothers of children diagnosed with ADHD, randomly assigned into two groups: Experimental Group (EG) and Control Group (CG). For the selection of the sample, in addition to the diagnosis of ADHD, the children must be between 7 and 12 years old, be attending to the elementary school and be under medication specific for ADHD. The study involved five phases: selection of the sample, pre-intervention assessment, intervention, post-intervention evaluation and follow-up. In the phases pre, post-intervention and follow-up, the assessment of the mother s social skills repertory was done through the use of self-report instruments (IHS-Del-Prette) and the Educative Social Skills through questionnaire and video filming. The children social skills repertoire was assessed by the mothers, the teachers and the children themselves through SSRS-BR in the three phases of the program. The program was composed by 31 group sessions and 12 individual sessions. The results were analyzed in relation to the frequency of the total and factorial scores (IHS-Del-Prette e SSRS-BR), and the scores for the filming and the questionnaire. For all the measures in the different moments the data were computed by the Statistical Package for Social Science (SPSS, version 16.0) and analyzed statistically (Mann-Whitney - independent samples and Wilcoxon - related samples). The results show that the program was effective in promoting significant changes for the mothers of the EG, mainly, for those skills which were the target of the intervention. The generalization of these skills, for the familiar context, favored meaningful changes in the social behaviors, behavior problems and academic competency of the children showed external validity. The differences between the two groups, experimental and control, showed impact over the mothers and the children behaviors, indicating its internal validity.