14 - Psychosocial interventions for anxiety disorders in children: status and future directions

Summary

Introduction

The clinical research literature on psychosocial interventions for use with anxiety disorders in children has made considerable advances in recent years in developing a solid knowledge base. The purpose of the present chapter is to review the status of the research literature in this area. In reviewing this literature, it shall become apparent that although considerable advances have been made, important issues remain. Thus, a second purpose of the chapter is to delineate a number of the main unresolved issues that would seem to be particularly important to resolve, or address, in future research efforts.

The particular type of psychosocial intervention that has received the most attention by child anxiety clinical researchers has been cognitive–behaviour therapy. Evidence for the efficacy of cognitive–behaviour therapy for use with anxiety disorders in children comes from case reports (Chiodos & Maddux, 1985; Eisen & Silverman, 1991), single case design studies (Eisen & Silverman, 1993, 1998; Kane & Kendall, 1989; Ollendick, 1995), and randomized clinical trials (Barrett, Dadds & Rapee, 1996; Cobham, Dadds & Spence, 1998; Kendall, 1994; Kendall et al., 1997; Silverman et al., 1999 a, b). Because the case reports and single case designs have been summarized elsewhere (Morris & Kratochwill, 1998), and because the randomized clinical trials are most likely to inform future research efforts, the focus in this chapter is on the randomized trials.