Brief Behavioral Treatment for Anxiety in Young Children

Summary

Behaviorally and cognitive-behaviorally based therapeutic techniques (BT; CBT) that incorporate exposure therapy useful for treatment of anxiety disorders among typically developing children. Although a large amount of data demonstrate the effectiveness of of BT and CBT approaches for treating anxious youth, there is a gap in the literature for the effectiveness of these approaches for children under the age of seven. Evidence increasingly suggests that family factors such as accommodation and parenting style contribute significantly to the presence of anxiety symptoms as well as treatment outcomes, particularly in young children. These findings stress the importance of using a treatment approach in which parents are directly involved in education, parent training, and generalization of treatment effects. Therefore, this study aims to evaluate a new treatment program, parent-led behavioral treatment, for children ages 3 to 7 years of age who have a principal anxiety disorder diagnosis.

Conditions

• Obsessive-compulsive Disorder
• Social Phobia
• Generalized Anxiety Disorder
• Specific Phobia
• Separation Anxiety Disorder
• Selective Mutism
• Anxiety Disorder, Not Otherwise Specified

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Parent-Led Exposure Therapy

Therapists will work with families for 10 sessions, twice weekly. The first treatment session will be a 90 minute parent only psychoeducation and treatment preparation session. Each subsequent session will last up to 60 minutes and will consist of exposure therapy using developmentally appropriate modulated behavioral approaches such as Participant modeling (PM) and Reinforced practice (RP).

OTHER

Treatment As Usual

Patients randomized to the TAU arm will be instructed to continue receiving their prior interventions as recommended by their providers (e.g., psychotherapy, social skills training, behavioral interventions, family participation in family therapy or a parenting class, or pharmacological interventions). Treatment changes (e.g., medication increase, starting psychotherapy in the community) are not prohibited and will be monitored. Thus, treatment will continue as it would in standard practice. These participants may also elect to receive no treatment at all during the TAU period.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University of South Florida

  lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

TREATMENT

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

3 Years

Max Age

7 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

No

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2014-01-31

Primary Completion

2016-08-31

Completion

2016-08-31

Countries

• United States

Study Locations