Effects of Parental Behavior on Child Anxiety Regulation

University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

Status and phase

Completed

Phase 2

Conditions

Social Phobia

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Separation Anxiety Disorder

Treatments

Behavioral: Family cognitive behavioral therapy

Behavioral: Child-focused cognitive behavioral therapy

Study type

Interventional

Funder types

Other

NIH

Identifiers

NCT00593515

1F31MH064999

Details and patient eligibility

About

Does parenting style affect emotion regulation among children who initially demonstrate high levels of fear and anxiety? Although recent correlational research has demonstrated a linkage between parental behaviors, such as excessive intrusiveness, and children's manifestations of fear and anxiety, it is not clear if parenting behaviors directly influence children's ability to regulate these emotions. Alternatively, these parental behaviors may be elicited by children who express fears and anxieties more frequently than other children do. Experimental research designs would offer a more definitive test of these competing explanations of the extant correlational findings. Intervention studies, in particular, can test whether experimentally manipulating current family interaction patterns affects children's ability to regulate emotion. This study provides a preliminary experimental test of the relationship between parental behavior and children's regulation of fear and anxiety. Some 40 clinically anxious youth, aged 6-13, were randomly assigned to a family intervention program for childhood anxiety problems, which includes extensive parent communication training, or a child intervention program without parent-training. By comparing these two interventions, we tested if it was possible to improve parenting behaviors-such as intrusiveness-through intensive parent-training, above and beyond the effects of involving children in a child intervention program. We then tested the impact of this change in parental behaviors on children's ability to regulate fear and anxiety. We hypothesized that parent-training would reduce intrusiveness, which would in turn improve children's anxiety outcomes.

Enrollment

40 patients

Sex

All

Ages

6 to 13 years old

Volunteers

No Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

The child met DSM-IV criteria for a diagnosis of a principal anxiety disorder based on a semi-structured interview
The child was not taking any psychiatric medication at the initial assessment, or was taking a stable dose of psychiatric medication (i.e., at least one month at a stable dose prior to the baseline assessment), and
If medication was being used, families stated an intention to maintain that dose throughout the study.

Exclusion criteria

The child was currently in child-focused psychotherapy
The family was currently in family therapy or a parenting class
Either the child or the parents evidenced psychotic symptoms
The child began taking psychiatric medication or increased his/her dose of medication during the intervention, or
For any reason the child or parents appeared unable to participate in the intervention program.