Predictors of treatment outcome for the unified protocol for transdiagnostic treatment of emotional disorders in children (UP-C)

Publication date: June 2018
Source:Journal of Anxiety Disorders, Volume 57
Author(s): Sarah M. Kennedy, Niza A. Tonarely, Jamie A. Sherman, Jill Ehrenreich-May
Various efficacious treatment packages exist for youth anxiety, and cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) is now considered to be a well-established treatment for child anxiety disorders (Higa-McMillan, Francis, Rith-Najarian, & Chorpita, 2016). Improving outcomes for the significant proportion of anxious youth who demonstrate inadequate response to CBT is imperative, but our understanding of who does and does not benefit is incomplete. Further, there are no known empirical studies of predictors of treatment response for youth who receive a transdiagnostic intervention for anxiety or depression, and it is therefore unclear whether predictors of response to a transdiagnostic treatment for children are similar to those found in previous studies of anxiety-specific treatments. This study investigated potential predictors of outcome following administration of the Unified Protocol for Transdiagnostic Treatment of Emotional Disorders in Children (UP-C; Ehrenreich-May et al., 2018). Participants were 60 children ages 6–13 (M = 9.47, SD = 1.68) with a primary anxiety diagnosis (with or without comorbid depression) who received a 15-week UP-C group treatment. Consistent with prior literature on CBT for anxiety, social anxiety emerged as a consistent predictor of poorer response to the UP-C. Inconsistent with prior literature, depression, symptom severity, parent psychopathology, and child age were not significant predictors of poor outcome. Results indicate some differences between predictors for transdiagnostic versus anxiety-focused treatments, but point to a need for both types of interventions to better target social anxiety in children.



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