Recruiting

Emotion Focused Family Therapy

Sponsor:

University of Guelph

Code:

NCT05603000

Conditions

Anxiety

Depression

Behavior Problem

Eligibility Criteria

Sex: All

Age: 7 - 15

Healthy Volunteers: Not accepted

Interventions

Emotion Focused Family Therapy

Study Details

Brief summary:

Emotion Focused Family Therapy (EFFT) is a promising intervention that aims to teach parents advanced skills to support their child's development of emotion skills and increase their adaptive behaviours, potentially leading to improvements in their child's psychological functioning and family functioning more broadly.

This randomized controlled trial (RCT; EFFT vs waitlist control) will (1) test the efficacy of a 6-week group EFFT program on parent and child outcomes and (2) examine maintenance of treatment gains up to four months post-intervention.

Conditions

Anxiety

Depression

Behavior Problem

Study ID

NCT05603000

Start date

Oct 11, 2022

Status verified date

Oct, 2025

Completion date

Mar, 2027

Anticipated

Primary completion date

Mar, 2027

Anticipated

Eligibility Criteria

Eligibility Criteria

Sex: All

Age: 7 - 15

Healthy Volunteers: Not accepted

Inclusion Criteria:

  • Parent of child aged 7 to 15 years old with anxiety, depression, or behavioural challenges
  • Parent of child is willing to participate in intervention
  • Parent is living at home with the child

Exclusion Criteria:

  • Parent or child not proficient enough in speaking/understanding English to complete measures or EFFT intervention components
  • Parent or child with a severe mental health disorder (e.g., active suicidality and psychosis) is not considered suitable for the trial intervention due to the clinical need for immediate intervention
  • Parent or child is actively receiving, or due to receive, intensive psychological intervention focused on cognitive and/or behavioural strategies to intervene with emotional or behavioural difficulties
  • Parent or child has any disabilities in language, speech or hearing that would interfere with their completion of the EFFT and measures
  • Parent or child are allergic to adhesive electrode gel use in some tasks (i.e., sodium chloride)

Study Design

Enrollment

200 participants

Anticipated

Allocation

Randomized

Intervention Model

Parallel Assignment

Primary purpose

Treatment

Interventions and Outcome Measures

Arms

no intervention: Waitlist (delayed intervention)

No treatment will be administered to participants in this arm until after the 4-month follow-up in-lab assessment is completed.

experimental: EFFT intervention

Treatment (6-week group Emotion Focused Family Therapy) will be administered to participants in this arm.

Interventions

Emotion Focused Family Therapy

The Emotion Focused Family Therapy (EFFT) intervention for this study will be delivered to groups of four to ten parents over six weekly sessions of two hours each. The goal of EFFT is to teach and empower parents to coach their child to process the emotions at the source of their mental health symptoms, to increase their child's adaptive behaviours, and to repair emotional injuries within the parent-child relationship. EFFT also targets parents' own emotional challenges that may prevent them from feeling capable or being able to support their child's treatment.

Each EFFT session will include introductions, psychoeducation about emotion and psychopathology, introduction of skills, experiential activities (e.g., chair work), open discussion and feedback, and homework activities covering the foci of EFFT: emotion coaching, behaviour coaching, therapeutic apology, and parental emotion blocks.

Primary outcome measure

  • Change in parental psychopathology symptoms at 6 weeks and 4 months [ Time Frame: Change at 6 weeks; Change at 4 months ]
  • Change in child psychopathology symptoms at 6 weeks and 4 months [ Time Frame: Change at 6 weeks; Change at 4 months ]
  • Change in parental emotion regulation at 6 weeks and 4 months [ Time Frame: Change at 6 weeks; Change at 4 months ]
  • Change in child emotion regulation at 6 weeks and 4 months [ Time Frame: Change at 6 weeks; Change at 4 months ]
  • Change in parent-child co-regulation at 6 weeks and 4 months [ Time Frame: Change at 6 weeks; Change at 4 months ]
  • Change in parent-child relationship functioning at 6 weeks and 4 months [ Time Frame: Change at 6 weeks; Change at 4 months ]

Central Contacts and Locations

Central contacts

Kristel Thomassin, Ph.D

519-824-4120kristel.thomassin@uoguelph.ca

Jessica A Seddon, MSc

jseddon@uoguelph.ca

Locations

Maplewoods Centre for Family Therapy and Child Psychology, University of Guelph

Recruiting

Guelph, Ontario, Canada, N1G 4S7

More Information

Sponsor

University of Guelph

Last update posted

Jan 23, 2026

Last verified

Oct, 2025

Keywords

  • children
  • parents
  • mental health
  • emotion
  • psychotherapy
  • parent-child relationship

Trial information was received from ClinicalTrials.gov and was last updated on 2026-09-10. This information was provided to ClinicalTrials.gov by University of Guelph on 2026-01-23.