Parent-Child Interaction Therapy for Mexican Americans: Results of a Pilot Randomized Clinical Trial at Follow-up

We examined treatment effects over a 6- to 24-month period posttreatment for 3 different interventions for externalizing behavior problems in young Mexican American (MA) children: a culturally modified version of Parent–Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), called Guiando a Niños Activos (GANA), standard PCIT, and treatment as usual (TAU). Fifty-eight MA families with a 3- to 7-year-old child with clinically significant behavior problems were randomly assigned to GANA, standard PCIT, or TAU. As previously reported, all three treatment approaches produced significant pre-post improvement in conduct problems across a wide variety of parent-report measures, and those effects remained significant over the follow-up period. GANA produced results that were significantly superior to TAU on 6 out of 10 parent-report measures 6 to 24 months posttreatment, and GANA significantly outperformed PCIT on child internalizing symptoms. However, PCIT and TAU did not differ significantly from one another. These data suggest that both PCIT and GANA produce treatment gains that are maintained over time, and that GANA continues to outperform TAU over the long term.

► A pilot randomized clinical trial compared culturally modified PCIT to standard PCIT and treatment as usual (TAU). ► The treatments were compared on parent-reported symptoms 6 to 24 months posttreatment. ► All three treatments produced improvement at long-term follow-up. ► The culturally modified intervention significantly outperformed TAU over the long-term, but the standard version did not. ► The culturally modified version differed from the standard version ON only one measure.