Enhancing Remote Parent–Child Video Visits During Parental Incarceration Using IMMERSIVE, a Brief Mindful Relational Savoring Intervention

Incarcerated parents and children’s caregivers participated in a brief mindfulness skills intervention called IMMERSIVE: Including Meaningful Mindful Experiences of Relational Savoring In Visiting Environments. The goal of IMMERSIVE was to support positive visiting experiences for families during incarceration by increasing adult perspective-taking, mindfulness, and positive emotion when reflecting on children’s visiting experiences.

In this mixed-methods study, implemented using an intervention-only group design, 44 families participated in the study, which included pre-intervention interviews, parent–child remote video visits, and two IMMERSIVE visit coaching sessions. We audio-recorded pre-intervention interviews focusing on the child, pre-visit coaching sessions, and post-visit coaching sessions. Parental reflective functioning was coded from transcripts. In addition, pre- and post-visit transcripts were analyzed for the frequency of positive emotion words, negative emotion words, and mindfulness words utilizing text analysis (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count-22).

For incarcerated parents, parental reflective functioning increased from pre-intervention to pre-visit coaching, with gains maintained through post-visit coaching sessions (medium effect size, p < 0.05). Negative emotion words decreased from pre- to post-visit coaching (large effect size, p < 0.05), with a particularly large effect size observed for at-home caregivers. Most caregivers and incarcerated parents reported that the intervention was helpful.

The study provides initial evidence that the IMMERSIVE intervention may help incarcerated parents gain insight into their children’s visiting experiences and help at-home caregivers use more positive and fewer negative emotion words when reflecting on children’s visiting experiences. Future research should confirm these benefits while expanding mindfulness skills interventions to include vulnerable children and families, such as families affected by parental incarceration.

This study is not preregistered.