Effectiveness of the Parent Training Programs of CALM and SPACE on the Rumination and Anxiety of Mothers with a Bully Son

Introduction: About one-third of children are involved in bullying in primary school. Parental mood as a family background plays an important role in bullying. This study aimed to compare the effectiveness of the parent training programs of CALM (coaching approach behavior and leading by modeling) and SPACE (supportive parenting for anxious childhood emotions) on the rumination and anxiety of mothers with a bully son. Methods: It was a quasi-experimental study with pretest-posttest design and a control group. The setting was the primary schools for boys in District 4 of Tehran in 2020. The research sample were the mothers of the bully sons in one of these schools that were selected using voluntary convenience sampling. A total of 60 mothers whose sons scored higher on the Illinois Bullying Scale were selected as the subjects and randomly assigned into three groups of 20 (two intervention groups and one control group). The data were collected by the Illinois Bullying Scale (Espelage & Holt, 2001), the Ruminative Response Scale (RRS) (Nolen Hoeksema & Morrow, 1991), and the Self-Anxiety Scale. The subjects in both intervention groups attended CALM or SPACE training programs for 13 two-hour sessions once a week. A three-month follow-up was also performed. The collected data were analyzed using repeated-measures analysis of variance (ANOVA) with SPSS software (V. 22). Results: The findings showed a significant difference between the intervention and control groups in terms of rumination (P=0.0001, F=47.54) and anxiety (P=0.0001, F=86.34) in the post-test phase. However, no significant difference was found between CALM (42.80±2.71) and SPACE (42.16±2.71) programs in terms of the effects on rumination (P=0.36). In contrast, SPACE (44±2.71) and CALM (39.46±2.71) programs showed significant differences in terms of their impact on anxiety (P<0.032); so that the CALM program had a greater impact on reducing anxiety than SPACE. The follow up results indicated that the CALM had greater retention effect than SPACE on decreasing anxiety of the mothers (42.76±1.02, P=0.0001). Conclusion: The results showed that both CALM and SPACE programs are effective in reducing maternal rumination and anxiety. However, CALM was more effective than SPACE in reducing maternal anxiety. The school counselors, mental health professionals, psychiatric nurses and school health nurses are suggested to apply the findings.