Empowering Anxious Parents to Manage Child Avoidance Behaviors
NCT ID: NCT04453865
Last Updated: 2021-03-18
Study Results
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Basic Information
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COMPLETED
NA
300 participants
INTERVENTIONAL
2020-07-05
2020-10-01
Brief Summary
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Detailed Description
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Single-session interventions (SSIs) may offer one potential solution to this gap in care. SSIs include core components of comprehensive EBIs delivered succinctly to improve the odds of access and completion. In a recent meta-analysis of 50 RCTs, SSIs reduced youth mental health problems of multiple disorders, with SSIs targeting child anxiety producing the largest effects (mean g = 0.58). Thus, well-targeted SSIs may offer cost-effective additions or alternatives to traditional care for anxiety in youth. However, most existing SSIs for child anxiety target populations already experiencing clinical distress, and a need remains for options that may prevent anxiety in vulnerable children. Given that family factors play a crucial role in the etiology of child anxiety, SSIs targeting parents and their interactions with offspring offer a novel approach to preventing youth anxiety. Thus, the aim of this project is to test the acceptability and short-term effects of a novel, web-based SSI targeting parental accommodation: a well-established, potentially modifiable risk factor for child anxiety. Results may reveal a promising, targeted approach to scalable child anxiety prevention.
Parental Accommodation as a Modifiable Intervention Target. Parent accommodation refers to changes in caregiver behaviors that facilitate or maintain their child's avoidance or anxiety. Examples include modifying family routines (i.e., staying home from work to alleviate a child's fear of separating) or directly participating in a child's avoidance strategies (i.e., keeping a child home from school). Parent accommodation reduces immediate distress but maintains long-term avoidance of feared stimuli or situations and high levels of parent accommodation are associated with anxiety problems in offspring. Parent accommodation is further maintained by caregiver factors, including parental anxiety and tolerance for distress. For instance, accommodation is greater among parents reporting higher distress about their child's anxiety symptoms and perceptions that anxiety exposure is harmful for youth.
Research shows that parent accommodation can be systematically reduced via psychosocial intervention, and interventions targeting accommodation have helped mitigate child anxiety. Translating core components of existing interventions that target parental accommodation into briefer, self-administered SSIs (i.e., those that do not involve a trained therapist) may improve families' access to empirically-driven supports for child anxiety. It may also enhance the implementation of mental health interventions by lay providers who frequently interact with children (e.g. teachers and pediatricians). Thus, the goal of this project is to test a web-based, self-guided SSI targeting parental accommodation. Parent participants will be randomized to either (a) Online Resources and Referrals (ORR) + parent accommodation SSI, or (b) ORR alone and delayed SSI access. We predict that parents will report larger declines in accommodation in the ORR+Accommodation SSI group, relative to the ORR + delayed SSI access group, from baseline to 2-week follow-up. We also predict that parents will perceive significant pre-to immediate-post-SSI increases in their ability to help their child manage distressing situations. Finally, we predict that participants will find the SSI to be acceptable.
Conditions
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Study Design
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RANDOMIZED
SEQUENTIAL
PREVENTION
NONE
Study Groups
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Project EMPOWER
Project EMPOWER is a web-based, self-administered SSI for parents that takes about 30 minutes to complete. The program includes 5 elements, based on current best-practices in SSI design (Schleider, Dobias, Sung, \& Mullarkey, 2020) and existing interventions targeting accommodation (Lebowitz \& Omer, 2014): (1) an introduction to the program's rationale; (2) psychoeducation around child anxiety and avoidance, along with how parental accommodation can inadvertently maintain child anxiety; (3) information on how parents can better identify children's patterns of avoidance and encourage brave behavior instead; (4) facilitating parents' creation of an "action plan" for promoting brave behavior and reduce avoidance in their own child; (5) a vignette exercise in which parents read about another family's difficulty managing their child's anxiety; parents identify the elements of the anxiety cycle and provide possible solutions to these parents based on what they learned.
Project EMPOWER
Project EMPOWER is a web-based, self-administered SSI for parents that takes about 30 minutes to complete
Online Resources and Referrals (ORR)
Online Resources and Referrals (ORR) is an information sheet containing materials about the nature of child anxiety and a list of national resources related anxiety treatment. ORR does not include any psychoeducational components regarding parental accommodation.
Online Resources and Referrals
Information sheet containing materials about the nature of child anxiety and a list of national resources related anxiety treatment.
Interventions
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Project EMPOWER
Project EMPOWER is a web-based, self-administered SSI for parents that takes about 30 minutes to complete
Online Resources and Referrals
Information sheet containing materials about the nature of child anxiety and a list of national resources related anxiety treatment.
Other Intervention Names
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Eligibility Criteria
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Inclusion Criteria
2. Have at least one child between the ages of 4-10 years old
3. Live in the United States (US)
Exclusion Criteria
ALL
Yes
Sponsors
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Stony Brook University
OTHER
Responsible Party
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Jessica Schleider
Assistant Professor of Psychology
Locations
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Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, New York, United States
Countries
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References
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Beecham J. Annual research review: Child and adolescent mental health interventions: a review of progress in economic studies across different disorders. J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2014 Jun;55(6):714-32. doi: 10.1111/jcpp.12216. Epub 2014 Feb 28.
Bodden DH, Dirksen CD, Bogels SM. Societal burden of clinically anxious youth referred for treatment: a cost-of-illness study. J Abnorm Child Psychol. 2008 May;36(4):487-97. doi: 10.1007/s10802-007-9194-4. Epub 2008 Jan 23.
Copeland WE, Angold A, Shanahan L, Costello EJ. Longitudinal patterns of anxiety from childhood to adulthood: the Great Smoky Mountains Study. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2014 Jan;53(1):21-33. doi: 10.1016/j.jaac.2013.09.017. Epub 2013 Oct 12.
Costello EJ, Egger HL, Angold A. The developmental epidemiology of anxiety disorders: phenomenology, prevalence, and comorbidity. Child Adolesc Psychiatr Clin N Am. 2005 Oct;14(4):631-48, vii. doi: 10.1016/j.chc.2005.06.003.
Degnan KA, Almas AN, Fox NA. Temperament and the environment in the etiology of childhood anxiety. J Child Psychol Psychiatry. 2010 Apr;51(4):497-517. doi: 10.1111/j.1469-7610.2010.02228.x. Epub 2010 Feb 11.
Edlund MJ, Unutzer J, Curran GM. Perceived need for alcohol, drug, and mental health treatment. Soc Psychiatry Psychiatr Epidemiol. 2006 Jun;41(6):480-7. doi: 10.1007/s00127-006-0047-1. Epub 2006 Mar 25.
Kendall, P. C., Aschenbrand, S. G., & Hudson, J. L. (2003). Child-focused treatment of anxiety. Evidence-Based Psychotherapies for Children and Adolescents, 81-100.
Lebowitz, E. R., Omer, H., Hermes, H., & Scahill, L. (2014). Parent Training for Childhood Anxiety Disorders: The SPACE Program. Cognitive and Behavioral Practice, 21(4), 456- 469. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cbpra.2013.10.004
Lebowitz ER, Panza KE, Su J, Bloch MH. Family accommodation in obsessive-compulsive disorder. Expert Rev Neurother. 2012 Feb;12(2):229-38. doi: 10.1586/ern.11.200.
Lebowitz ER, Scharfstein L, Jones J. Child-Report of Family Accommodation in Pediatric Anxiety Disorders: Comparison and Integration with Mother-Report. Child Psychiatry Hum Dev. 2015 Aug;46(4):501-11. doi: 10.1007/s10578-014-0491-1.
Merikangas KR, He JP, Burstein M, Swendsen J, Avenevoli S, Case B, Georgiades K, Heaton L, Swanson S, Olfson M. Service utilization for lifetime mental disorders in U.S. adolescents: results of the National Comorbidity Survey-Adolescent Supplement (NCS-A). J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2011 Jan;50(1):32-45. doi: 10.1016/j.jaac.2010.10.006. Epub 2010 Dec 3.
Mojtabai R, Olfson M, Sampson NA, Jin R, Druss B, Wang PS, Wells KB, Pincus HA, Kessler RC. Barriers to mental health treatment: results from the National Comorbidity Survey Replication. Psychol Med. 2011 Aug;41(8):1751-61. doi: 10.1017/S0033291710002291. Epub 2010 Dec 7.
Ramos-Cerqueira AT, Torres AR, Torresan RC, Negreiros AP, Vitorino CN. Emotional burden in caregivers of patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder. Depress Anxiety. 2008;25(12):1020-7. doi: 10.1002/da.20431.
Salloum A, Johnco C, Lewin AB, McBride NM, Storch EA. Barriers to access and participation in community mental health treatment for anxious children. J Affect Disord. 2016 May 15;196:54-61. doi: 10.1016/j.jad.2016.02.026. Epub 2016 Feb 10.
Schleider JL, Dobias ML, Sung JY, Mullarkey MC. Future Directions in Single-Session Youth Mental Health Interventions. J Clin Child Adolesc Psychol. 2020 Mar-Apr;49(2):264-278. doi: 10.1080/15374416.2019.1683852. Epub 2019 Dec 4.
Schleider JL, Mullarkey MC, Weisz JR. Virtual Reality and Web-Based Growth Mindset Interventions for Adolescent Depression: Protocol for a Three-Arm Randomized Trial. JMIR Res Protoc. 2019 Jul 9;8(7):e13368. doi: 10.2196/13368.
Schleider, J. L., & Weisz, J. R. (2017a). Can less be more? The promise (and perils) of single session youth mental health interventions. The Behavior Therapist, 40(7), 256-261.
Schleider JL, Weisz JR. Little Treatments, Promising Effects? Meta-Analysis of Single-Session Interventions for Youth Psychiatric Problems. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 2017 Feb;56(2):107-115. doi: 10.1016/j.jaac.2016.11.007. Epub 2016 Nov 25.
Settipani CA, Kendall PC. The Effect of Child Distress on Accommodation of Anxiety: Relations With Maternal Beliefs, Empathy, and Anxiety. J Clin Child Adolesc Psychol. 2017 Nov-Dec;46(6):810-823. doi: 10.1080/15374416.2015.1094741. Epub 2015 Dec 16.
Storch, E. A., Lehmkuhl, H., Pence, S. L., Geffken, G. R., Ricketts, E., Storch, J. F., & Murphy, T. K. (2009). Parental experiences of having a child with obsessive-compulsive disorder: Associations with clinical characteristics and caregiver adjustment. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 18(3), 249-258.
Thompson-Hollands J, Kerns CE, Pincus DB, Comer JS. Parental accommodation of child anxiety and related symptoms: range, impact, and correlates. J Anxiety Disord. 2014 Dec;28(8):765-73. doi: 10.1016/j.janxdis.2014.09.007. Epub 2014 Sep 16.
Sung JY, Mumper E, Schleider JL. Empowering Anxious Parents to Manage Child Avoidance Behaviors: Randomized Control Trial of a Single-Session Intervention for Parental Accommodation. JMIR Ment Health. 2021 Jul 6;8(7):e29538. doi: 10.2196/29538.
Provided Documents
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Document Type: Statistical Analysis Plan
Other Identifiers
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IRB2020-00069
Identifier Type: -
Identifier Source: org_study_id
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