NEW TREATMENT FOR ANXIOUS CHILDREN

Anxiety disorders, including social phobia, separation anxiety and generalised anxiety, are the most common mental health problems in childhood, with up to one-third of youth experiencing a clinically impairing anxiety disorder. Anxiety disorders can cause long-term impairment and an increased risk of additional physical and mental health problems. A new study published in the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry reports that an entirely parent-based treatment, SPACE (Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions), is as efficacious as individual cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) for the treatment of childhood and adolescent anxiety disorders. The study enrolled 124 children with existing clinical anxiety disorders and randomly assigned them to receive either the current frontline CBT treatment, or SPACE – developed by Dr Eli Lebowitz at the Yale School of Medicine. SPACE teaches parents to reduce their accommodation and to respond to a child’s anxiety symptoms in a supportive manner that conveys acceptance of the child’s genuine distress along with confidence in the child’s ability to cope with anxiety. Anxious children often look to their parents for help in coping with their anxiety and avoiding the things that make them feel afraid.

Parents of anxious children can become entangled in their child’s symptoms through ‘family accommodation’. For example, a child who is chronically worried may rely on a parent for constant reassurance, or a child with separation anxiety may require a parent to sleep next to them at night. For children with social phobia, parents may speak in place of the child or avoid having guests over. Research indicates that family accommodation can contribute to maintaining the child’s anxiety symptoms. For both treatments, approximately 60 per cent of children no longer met diagnostic criteria for any anxiety disorder following treatment, based on assessments conducted by independent evaluators unaware of which treatment children received. Around 87 per cent of SPACE patients and 75 per cent of CBT patients showed significant improvement in their symptoms.