Meta-Analysis Finds Group CBT Optimal Psychotherapy for Children, Adolescents With Anxiety

Group therapy may work best for children and adolescents with anxiety, a meta-analysis of various psychotherapies found, with group cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) showing the greatest effectiveness in reducing anxiety symptoms. Thereport was published this week inJAMA Psychiatry.“The results of our analysis suggest that psychotherapy delivered in a group format may generally result in better outcomes than when delivered individually,” wrote Xinyu Zhou, Ph.D., of Chongqing Medical University in China and colleagues. The benefit “may be attributed to the additional expo sure of social stimuli and interaction in the group format and thus increasing the efficacy of psychotherapy.”Zhou and colleagues searched various databases for studies that compared any structured psychotherapy with another (or a control condition) for the acute treatment of anxiety disorders in children and adolescents (18 years or younger). The meta-analysis included 6,625 participants who received one of 11 distinct psychotherapies.Most (93) of the 101 trials included in the meta-analysis assessed various forms of CBT (individual and/or group CBT, CBT with parental involvement, parent-only CBT, and self-help forms of CBT). Eight studies assessed forms of behavioral therapy (BT), including individual and/or group BT or individual BT with parental involvement.The authors examined the efficacy of the various psychotherapies, as measured by the change in anxiety symptoms from baseline to the end of t...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: adolescents anxiety CBT children cognitive-behavior therapy JAMA Psychiatry meta-analysis psychotherapy Xinyu Zhou Source Type: research