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Future Thinking to Improve Parent-Child Relationships
Sponsor: Henry Ford Health System
Summary
Parents with substance use disorders are disproportionately more likely to engage in harsh physical discipline, which can lead to serious clinical outcomes, including child maltreatment and the intergenerational transmission of addictive disorders. One mechanism linking substance use and maladaptive parenting strategies is parental delay discounting, or the tendency to value smaller, immediate rewards (such as stopping children's misbehavior via physical punishment) relative to larger, but delayed rewards (like shaping adaptive child behaviors over time). This study will examine the effectiveness of a brief, episodic future thinking (EFT) intervention in a substance use treatment setting to increase parents' focus on positive, future events associated with enhancing the parent-child relationship. This study will inform broader public health efforts aimed at reducing child maltreatment and interrupting intergenerational cycles of substance abuse in traditionally underserved communities.
Official title: Further Forward: Future Thinking to Improve Parent-Child Relationships
Key Details
Gender
All
Age Range
Any - Any
Study Type
INTERVENTIONAL
Enrollment
72
Start Date
2023-09-01
Completion Date
2025-12-01
Last Updated
2025-11-26
Healthy Volunteers
Yes
Conditions
Interventions
Episodic Future Thinking (EFT)
The adapted episodic future thinking (EFT) intervention will focus on generation of vivid, substance-free, rewarding events that could happen in the future with their children.
Episodic Recent Thinking (ERT)
In the episodic recent thinking (ERT) condition, the participant will instead describe in vivid details events that have occurred in the recent past.
Locations (1)
Odyssey Village
Flint, Michigan, United States