Shortened CBT Program May Help Youth With Anxiety Problems

Youth with anxiety problems can benefit from as few as five sessions of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) delivered at school, suggests astudy published in theJournal of the American Academy of Child& Adolescent Psychiatry.Studies in multiple countries including the United States have shown that school-based CBT programs that identify and treat youth considered at risk of disorders like depression or anxiety can be effective. A typical course of CBT involves eight to 12 sessions, which can be difficult to implement in a school setting, wrote Bente Storm Mowatt Haugland, Ph.D., of the University of Bergen in Norway and colleagues.Haugland and colleagues tested whether a condensed CBT program called Vaag could be as effective as standard CBT. Vaag involves five CBT sessions that total 5.5 hours; the first four sessions (which includes one joint youth-parent session) are given over four weeks, and the final session is given five weeks later.A total of 313 adolescents aged 12 to 16 in junior high schools throughout Norway reporting anxiety symptoms were invited to participate in the study. Ninety-one of the students received the brief CBT therapy, 118 students received standard CBT (10 sessions that totaled 15 hours), and 104 were placed on a waitlist for 10 weeks.After 10 weeks, the youth who received CBT (whether brief or standard) had significantly greater reductions in their anxiety symptoms (measured with the Spence Children ’s Anxiety Scale or SCAS) compared with tho...
Source: Psychiatr News - Category: Psychiatry Tags: anxiety brief CBT child and adolescent psychiatry cognitive behavioral therapy Journal of the American Academy of Child & school-based intervention targeted intervention Source Type: research