Technology and Early Anxiety Treatment

NCT ID: NCT03255122

Last Updated: 2020-07-02

Study Results

Results pending

The study team has not published outcome measurements, participant flow, or safety data for this trial yet. Check back later for updates.

Basic Information

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Recruitment Status

COMPLETED

Clinical Phase

NA

Total Enrollment

40 participants

Study Classification

INTERVENTIONAL

Study Start Date

2016-11-03

Study Completion Date

2020-04-22

Brief Summary

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The goal of the study is to evaluate the efficacy of an Internet-delivered format of an evidence-based CBT treatment for early social anxiety disorder (Coaching Approach behavior and Leading by Modeling, or the CALM Program) in which therapists and families meet in real-time via videoconferencing and parent-child interactions are broadcast from the family's home via a webcam while therapists provide bug-in-the-ear coaching from a remote site. In a randomized controlled trial (RCT), the proposed work will evaluate 40 youth with social anxiety disorder (ages 3-8); 20 will receive the CALM Program over the Internet (I-CALM) and 20 will be assigned to a waitlist control and will complete a course of I-CALM after the waitlist period. Outcomes will be assessed via structured diagnostic interviews and parent-report questionnaires.

Detailed Description

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The goal of the study is to evaluate the efficacy of an Internet-delivered format of an evidence-based CBT treatment for early child social anxiety disorder (Coaching Approach behavior and Leading by Modeling, or the CALM Program) in which therapists and families meet in real-time via videoconferencing and parent-child interactions are broadcast from the family's home via a webcam while therapists provide bug-in-the-ear coaching from a remote site. In a randomized controlled trial (RCT), the proposed work will evaluate 40 youth with social anxiety disorder (ages 3-8); 20 will receive the CALM Program over the Internet (I-CALM) and 20 will be assigned to a waitlist control, followed by I-CALM treatment.

SPECIFIC AIMS:

* Aim 1: To evaluate I-CALM efficacy for reducing early child social anxiety symptoms and related impairments and for improving child and parent quality of life.
* Aim 2: To examine the extent to which I-CALM helps families overcome traditional barriers to effective care, including geographic barriers and regional professional workforce shortages in social anxiety expert care.
* Aim 3: To evaluate the feasibility, acceptability, and satisfaction of I-CALM from the perspective of treated\\ families, and lay the foundation for a large Florida statewide implementation of I-CALM for early social anxiety.

RATIONALE: Despite progress in supported programs for child social anxiety disorder, gaps persist between treatment in specialty clinics and services broadly available in the community. Although considerable advances show social anxiety is treatable when appropriate CBT is available, barriers interfere with the broad provision of quality care. Few sufferers receive services, and those who do receive services do not necessarily receive evidence-based care. Many U.S. counties have no psychologist, psychiatrist, or social worker, let alone professionals trained in supported social anxiety treatments. When effective programs are available, transportation issues constrain access, with large proportions of patients reporting that services are too far away or they have no way to get to a clinic. Expert providers cluster around metropolitan regions and major academic hubs, leaving considerable numbers of youth without access to supported service options. Youth from low-income or remote and rural communities are particularly unlikely to receive appropriate care. High rates of stigma-related beliefs further constrain service utilization, with many reporting negative attitudes about visiting a mental health clinic.

An Internet-delivered, real-time intervention for the remote treatment of early child social anxiety disorder has the potential to meaningfully extend the reach of effective social anxiety treatment for underserved youth and can serve as the critical foundation upon which to build a larger-scale statewide implementation of early social anxiety treatment. Moreover, treating youth in their homes can overcome stigma-related concerns that interfere with families attending services at a psychiatric clinic, and treatment gains may be more generalizable and ecologically valid as services are provided to youth in their natural settings.

SERVICES: The CALM Program (Coaching Approach behavior and Leading by Modeling) was developed as a developmentally compatible intervention to treat anxiety disorders in children below age 8. The CALM Program is an adaptation of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy (PCIT), which was initially developed to treat early behavior problems, and incorporates a family-based approach to early child anxiety. Whereas effective treatment for older socially anxious youth requires a set of cognitive abilities that younger children typically do not fully possess, it has been demonstrated that adaptations of PCIT-which do not target children directly, but rather work to reshape the primary contexts of child development in order to treat child anxiety-can offer more developmentally compatible approaches for intervening with early social anxiety. The CALM Program is a parent-focused treatment that educates families about social anxiety and teaches parents skills to effectively reinforce their children's brave social behavior and coaches the use of these skills during in-session parent-child interactions. The treatment emphasizes live, bug-in-the-ear coaching of parents during in vivo exposure sessions. Child symptoms are targeted by reshaping interaction patterns associated with the maintenance of child anxiety and by reducing parental accommodation of child bids to avoid social situations.

Traditionally, the CALM therapist is situated behind a one-way mirror and unobtrusively provides real-time feedback to parents through a parent-worn earpiece. It has been suggested that PCIT-based approaches are particularly amenable to a web format given that by design the therapist conducts live observation and feedback from another room via a parent-worn bug-in-the-ear device. That is, even in standard clinic-based CALM, the therapist is predominantly separated from the family in order to foster naturalistic family interactions and child behavior. Despite progress in the development of the CALM Program for social anxiety, and progress in the field of behavioral telehealth, research has yet to evaluate the efficacy of an Internet-delivered format of the CALM Program (I-PCIT) for extending the accessibility of treatment. I-CALM families will receive treatment using secure and encrypted videoconferencing software, and parents will receive live coaching via a Bluetooth earpiece. Independent evaluators will conduct diagnostic interviews, collect parent-report forms, and conduct structured observations at baseline, post-treatment, and 6-months follow-up.

OUTCOMES: Independent evaluators (IEs) masked to participant condition assignment will conduct diagnostic interviews, collect parent-report forms, and conduct structured observations at baseline, post-treatment, and 6-month follow-up.

Conditions

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Anxiety Disorders

Study Design

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Allocation Method

RANDOMIZED

Intervention Model

PARALLEL

Families are randomly designed to receive either immediate treatment (I-CALM) or waitlist and then I-CALM
Primary Study Purpose

TREATMENT

Blinding Strategy

SINGLE

Outcome Assessors
Independent evaluators masked to each participating family's treatment condition will perform all structured diagnostic interviews and generate responder status data

Study Groups

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Immediate treatment

Individuals in this condition will immediately receive I-CALM treatment, which draws on videoconferencing to remotely deliver real time cognitive-behavioral therapy for early child anxiety to families in their home.

Group Type EXPERIMENTAL

I-CALM

Intervention Type BEHAVIORAL

Families receiving I-CALM will immediately receive a videoconferencing-based, Internet-delivered format of an evidence-based CBT treatment for early child social anxiety disorder (Coaching Approach behavior and Leading by Modeling, or the CALM Program; Puliafico, Comer, \& Albano, 2013) in which therapists and families meet in real-time via videoconferencing and parent-child interactions are broadcast from the family's home via a webcam while therapists provide bug-in-the-ear coaching from a remote site. Parents are taught and guided in how to coach their young anxious child to engage in brave, approach behavior.

Waitlist

Individuals in Waitlist will participate in an initial waitlist condition, and then after post-waitlist assessment will be offered the I-CALM intervention. Accordingly families in this condition receive Delayed I-CALM.

Group Type OTHER

Delayed I-CALM

Intervention Type BEHAVIORAL

Families receiving Delayed I-CALM will participate in a waitlist period, and then will complete the I-CALM treatment program.

Interventions

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I-CALM

Families receiving I-CALM will immediately receive a videoconferencing-based, Internet-delivered format of an evidence-based CBT treatment for early child social anxiety disorder (Coaching Approach behavior and Leading by Modeling, or the CALM Program; Puliafico, Comer, \& Albano, 2013) in which therapists and families meet in real-time via videoconferencing and parent-child interactions are broadcast from the family's home via a webcam while therapists provide bug-in-the-ear coaching from a remote site. Parents are taught and guided in how to coach their young anxious child to engage in brave, approach behavior.

Intervention Type BEHAVIORAL

Delayed I-CALM

Families receiving Delayed I-CALM will participate in a waitlist period, and then will complete the I-CALM treatment program.

Intervention Type BEHAVIORAL

Eligibility Criteria

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Inclusion Criteria

* Children 3-8 years old, and at least one primary caregiver
* Child has diagnosis of social anxiety disorder (as assessed in pre-treatment assessment).
* Child and parent both speak either English or Spanish fluently
* Family's home is equipped with computing device and high-speed internet

Exclusion Criteria

* Child has emotional/behavioral problem more impairing than difficulties captured by an anxiety disorder diagnosis.
* Child receiving medication or other psychotherapy to manage emotional difficulties
* History of severe physical or mental impairments (e.g., intellectual disability, deafness, blindness, pervasive developmental disorder) in child or participating caregiver(s)
* Child is a ward of the state
Minimum Eligible Age

3 Years

Maximum Eligible Age

8 Years

Eligible Sex

ALL

Accepts Healthy Volunteers

No

Sponsors

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Andrew Kukes Foundation for Social Anxiety

UNKNOWN

Sponsor Role collaborator

Florida International University

OTHER

Sponsor Role lead

Responsible Party

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Jonathan S. Comer

Professor of Psychology

Responsibility Role PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Principal Investigators

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Jonathan S Comer, PhD

Role: PRINCIPAL_INVESTIGATOR

Florida International University

Locations

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Florida International University

Miami, Florida, United States

Site Status

Countries

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United States

References

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Comer, J.S. (2015). Introduction to the special section: Applying new technologies to extend the scope and accessibility of mental health care. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 22, 253-257. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cbpra.2015.04.002

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Comer JS, Barlow DH. The occasional case against broad dissemination and implementation: retaining a role for specialty care in the delivery of psychological treatments. Am Psychol. 2014 Jan;69(1):1-18. doi: 10.1037/a0033582. Epub 2013 Aug 5.

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Comer JS, Furr JM, Cooper-Vince CE, Kerns CE, Chan PT, Edson AL, Khanna M, Franklin ME, Garcia AM, Freeman JB. Internet-delivered, family-based treatment for early-onset OCD: a preliminary case series. J Clin Child Adolesc Psychol. 2014;43(1):74-87. doi: 10.1080/15374416.2013.855127. Epub 2013 Dec 2.

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Comer JS, Furr JM, Cooper-Vince C, Madigan RJ, Chow C, Chan P, Idrobo F, Chase RM, McNeil CB, Eyberg SM. Rationale and Considerations for the Internet-Based Delivery of Parent-Child Interaction Therapy. Cogn Behav Pract. 2015 Aug 1;22(3):302-316. doi: 10.1016/j.cbpra.2014.07.003.

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Comer JS, Furr JM, Kerns CE, Miguel E, Coxe S, Elkins RM, Carpenter AL, Cornacchio D, Cooper-Vince CE, DeSerisy M, Chou T, Sanchez AL, Khanna M, Franklin ME, Garcia AM, Freeman JB. Internet-delivered, family-based treatment for early-onset OCD: A pilot randomized trial. J Consult Clin Psychol. 2017 Feb;85(2):178-186. doi: 10.1037/ccp0000155. Epub 2016 Nov 21.

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Reference Type BACKGROUND

Puliafico, A.C., Comer, J.S., & Albano, A.M. (2013). Coaching Approach behavior and Leading by Modeling: Rationale, principles, and a case illustration of the CALM Program for anxious preschoolers. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 20, 517-528. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cbpra.2012.05.002

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Other Identifiers

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IRB-16-0182

Identifier Type: -

Identifier Source: org_study_id

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