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Randomized Controlled Trial
. 2013 Sep;30(9):865-72.
doi: 10.1002/da.22055. Epub 2013 Feb 6.

Benefits of child-focused anxiety treatments for parents and family functioning

Courtney P Keeton  1 , Golda S Ginsburg, Kelly L Drake, Dara Sakolsky, Philip C Kendall, Boris Birmaher, Anne Marie Albano, John S March, Moira Rynn, John Piacentini, John T Walkup
Affiliations
Randomized Controlled Trial

Benefits of child-focused anxiety treatments for parents and family functioning

Courtney P Keeton et al. Depress Anxiety. 2013 Sep.

Abstract

Background: To examine (1) changes in parent (global psychological distress, trait anxiety) and family (dysfunction, burden) functioning following 12 weeks of child-focused anxiety treatment, and (2) whether changes in these parent and family factors were associated with child's treatment condition and response.

Methods: Participants were 488 youth ages 7-17 years (50% female; mean age 10.7 years) who met DSM-IV-TR criteria for social phobia, separation anxiety, and/or generalized anxiety disorder, and their parents. Youth were randomly assigned to 12 weeks of "Coping Cat" individual cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), medication management with sertraline (SRT), their combination (COMB), or medication management with pill placebo (PBO) within the multisite Child/Adolescent Anxiety Multimodal Study (CAMS). At pre- and posttreatment, parents completed measures of trait anxiety, psychological distress, family functioning, and burden of child illness; children completed a measure of family functioning. Blinded independent evaluators rated child's response to treatment using the Clinical Global Impression-Improvement Scale at posttreatment.

Results: Analyses of covariance revealed that parental psychological distress and trait anxiety, and parent-reported family dysfunction improved only for parents of children who were rated as treatment responders, and these changes were unrelated to treatment condition. Family burden and child-reported family dysfunction improved significantly from pre- to posttreatment regardless of treatment condition or response.

Conclusions: Findings suggest that child-focused anxiety treatments, regardless of intervention condition, can result in improvements in nontargeted parent symptoms and family functioning particularly when children respond successfully to the treatment.

Keywords: child anxiety; cognitive-behavioral therapy; family functioning; family outcomes; parent anxiety; parent psychopathology; pharmacotherapy; randomized controlled trial; treatment.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Estimated marginal means of parental psychopathology by child treatment response and condition.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Estimated marginal means of parental anxiety by child treatment response and condition.
Figure 3
Figure 3
Estimated marginal means of parent-reported family dysfunction by child treatment response and condition.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

References

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