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Future Thinking to Improve Parent-Child Relationships

NCT05963633 · Status: ACTIVE_NOT_RECRUITING · Phase: NA · Type: INTERVENTIONAL · Enrollment: 72

Last updated 2025-11-26

No results posted yet for this study

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.

Conditions

  • Behavior, Health

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

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.

BEHAVIORAL

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.

Sponsors & Collaborators

  • University of Kansas

    collaborator OTHER

  • University of Maryland, College Park

    collaborator OTHER

  • Henry Ford Health System

    lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation
RANDOMIZED
Purpose
PREVENTION
Masking
NONE
Model
PARALLEL

Eligibility

Sex
ALL
Healthy Volunteers
Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start
2023-09-01
Primary Completion
2025-12-01
Completion
2025-12-01

Countries

  • United States

Study Locations

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Read the full study record

This page highlights key information. For complete eligibility criteria, study locations, investigator contacts, and the full protocol, visit the original record on ClinicalTrials.gov.

View NCT05963633 on ClinicalTrials.gov