Evaluating the Effects of Self-Guided Cognitive-Behavioral Interventions for Parents of Young Children with Anxiety
Anxiety disorders are very common in children, affecting as many as 30% by adolescence. Even 10% of preschool-age children are already affected. Family-based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) has been shown to be an effective treatment for anxiety disorders in preschoolers, but most children are not treated for anxiety until much later in childhood. This delay leads to worsening symptoms and the onset of additional disorders, meaning that once children do get treatment, the treatment needed is more complicated and lasts longer. Young children often do not receive treatment because pediatricians, parents, and teachers do not realize that treatment can benefit them and because there is a shortage of providers trained in CBT. One way to make CBT available to more children and to prevent worsening outcomes is to offer online and self-guided interventions that parents can complete without a clinician.
The current study will screen young children (ages 2-7 years) in our hospital system for anxiety, using parent questionnaires, and will test two of these novel self-guided interventions for parents of children who score high. Both interventions are based on CBT principles and teach parents how to promote brave behaviors in their child (rather than allowing the child to avoid situations that make them nervous). One is a single session intervention, and the other includes three brief instructional videos with knowledge checks and a parent workbook. We would like to see whether parents can better manage their child’s anxiety if they complete one of the self-guided interventions compared to just receiving education about helpful versus not helpful anxiety. We will also explore whether one or the other these interventions works better for certain children. Because the intervention strategies we propose are brief and easy to use, they could be easily implemented as part of routine practice, in much the same way as early intervention for other common childhood health conditions. The current study will give us information that has the potential to work toward easing the mental crisis in our youth.