Using Smartphones to Enhance the Treatment of Childhood Anxiety

The primary goal of this research study is to develop an interactive smartphone app that could be used to increase the effectiveness of talk therapy such as cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) for child anxiety.

Boys and girls between the ages of 9-14 who have anxiety and a parent or caregiver are being asked to participate in this study. Interested participants who contact the study will be asked to undergo a brief phone pre-screen to determine initial eligibility. After completing a phone pre-screen, potential participants for the Phase 2 trial will be invited to the lab to complete a clinical intake interview. Clinical information will be obtained from parent and child by a trained research staff member. The research staff member will have specific training to a high degree of reliability in conducting the diagnostic interviews relevant to this research study. Participants that meet study criteria based on the clinical information obtained at the first study visit will be invited to begin a course of Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT), an empirically validated talk therapy commonly used to treat children with anxiety. Children will receive individual treatment using the Brief Coping Cat Manual. The Coping Cat program (Kendall 1994) is an empirically supported child-focused CBT treatment for children with anxiety disorders. Throughout the program, children are encouraged to practice techniques learned during therapy sessions through homework or "Show-That-I-Can" (STIC) tasks. Parents attend weekly check-ins and two parent-only sessions. STIC tasks will consist of specific SmartCAT modules in the smartphone app as assigned at the end of each session. Participants might be asked to interact with other children and adolescents or study staff as well as leave the therapy building. This is to allow participants to become more comfortable in situations that make them feel anxious by gradually exposing them to the specific situation. Parents are not treated as co-clients, but are considered consultants to the child's treatment and are asked to provide some collaboration and assistance in exposure planning and homework. Treatment will be delivered by Masters-level therapists who will have completed training in CBT. They will attend a weekly supervision session with Dr. Silk, with consultation from Dr. Kendall on difficult cases via videoconference. All sessions will be videotaped. SMARTPHONE PROTOCOL: Prior to the first therapy session, the child and a parent will be trained how to use the SmartCAT app. Youth will be provided with an Android smartphone for the duration of the study. If the child already has an Android phone, the app will be installed on the participant's phone in order to decrease participant burden of carrying an additional phone. Participants will be given a study-provided, pre-programmed smartphone on which they will enter their responses to a series of questions about moods and daily experiences using an app developed for this study. The child will receive an electronic notification message once per day and will be prompted through a series of questions about what he/she is doing, who he/she is with, how he/she is feeling, worries or stressful events, and how he/she coped with these events. It should take the child approximately 5 minutes each time to complete the questions. The child will only be prompted to answer these questions outside of school hours and on weekends. Participant data will be securely sent to study therapists via a clinician portal connected to the app to be reviewed weekly. The therapists may then integrate this information into treatment and provide customized feedback to the patient. Parents will be asked to complete an online diary to keep track of what skills their child uses during the week. After completion of the initial screening visit, parents are asked to complete the Skills Use Diary daily for seven days. After this seven day period, they will be asked to complete a diary entry twice per week throughout 8 weeks of treatment, totaling 30 entries. At the end of treatment, subjects will again be asked to complete the diary daily for another seven days. Participants will receive links to the online diary and instructions for completion via email (see references and other attachments for the email script). Diaries should take no longer than 10 min per day to complete. The data will be encrypted and stored securely through the online survey system Qualtrics. POST-TREATMENT and 2-MONTH FOLLOW-UP: All clinical, skill acquisition, and skill utilization measures (including the parent 7 day diary) will be repeated at post-treatment (approximately 10 weeks) and 2 month follow-up We will use Qualtrics, a secure internet data collection system, for administering diaries and questionnaires.