The treatment of childhood social phobia: the effectiveness of a social skills training-based, cognitive-behavioural intervention, with and without parental involvement

Abstract

Fifty children aged 7-14 years with a principal diagnosis of social phobia were randomly assigned to either child-focused cognitive-behaviour therapy (CBT), CBT plus parent involvement, or a wait list control (WLC). The integrated CBT program involved intensive social skills training combined with graded exposure and cognitive challenging. At posttreatment, significantly fewer children in the treatment conditions retained a clinical diagnosis of social phobia compared to the WLC condition. In comparison to the WLC, children in both CBT interventions showed significantly greater reductions in children's social and general anxiety and a significant increase in parental ratings of child social skills performance. At 12-month follow-up, both treatment groups retained their improvement. There was a trend towards superior results when parents were involved in treatment, but this effect was not statistically significant.