Transdisciplinary Studies of CBT for Anxiety in Youth: Child Anxiety Treatment Study

The purpose of this study is to investigate neurobehavioral, affective, and social processes that may influence and predict treatment response in pediatric anxiety disorders.

This protocol proposes to study neurobehavioral and social correlates of treatment response in 200 youth (ages 9-13) with general anxiety disorder (GAD), separation anxiety disorder (SAD), and social phobia (SP). All youth with an anxiety disorder will receive 14 weeks of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) or Client Centered Therapy (CCT) for child anxiety disorders. The study combines state-of-the-art measures from affective neuroscience, ecologically valid (EMA) measures of mood and behavior in natural environments, and measures of family and social context within a developmentally framed treatment study. The study design focuses on predictors and mechanisms of treatment response. This protocol will test key features of a "vigilance-avoidance" model focusing on hypotheses that pretreatment neural correlates of affective reactivity will predict treatment response and early changes in emotional processing will correlate with clinical response during treatment. In addition, the protocol examines how affective experiences within the family and social context are associated with treatment response and change across treatment, and how these are associated with and interact with neurobehavioral changes in affective functioning. Taken together these aspects of the study will advance understanding of the neurobehavioral, affective, and social processes that underpin treatment response in ways that will inform the design, refinement, and optimal developmental timing of cognitive behavioral treatments, and thus, decrease the morbidity, mortality, and lifetime impairments from these common disorders in youth.