Family-Focused CBT Skills App and Standard Self Help Options for Childhood Anxiety

Kansas City Center for Anxiety Treatment, P.A.

Status: Completed

Conditions: Childhood Mental Disorder; Anxiety; Anxiety Disorders

Treatments: Behavioral: Parent Enhanced Anchors Away; Behavioral: Self-Help E-Book; Behavioral: Anchors Away

Study type: Interventional

Funder types: Industry

Identifiers

NCT03269370

2R44MH098470-03

Details and patient eligibility

About

Anxiety disorders are among the most common psychological disorders, with prevalent onset in childhood and adolescence. While cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is considered the first-line treatment for pediatric anxiety, significant barriers remain in accessing CBT and other evidence-based treatments (EBTs), and credible self-help resources based in EBT concepts. This study evaluates a family-guided CBT game application (Anchors App), targeted to children ages 6-11 and their families, which focuses on delivering adaptive CBT-based coping skills to those who have sub-clinical to mild anxiety and related symptoms in a convenient and portable platform. Anchors App will be evaluated in two forms (standard and "parent-enhanced") in comparison to use of a self-help book or waitlist control. The rapid advancements in technology allows richer interactive capacity, content scalability, customizability, and subscription to a broader range of content, which this app capitalizes on in order to increase access to CBT skill concepts directly to pediatric stakeholder populations. If found to be effective, Anchors App has the opportunity to promote engagement of EBT concepts in every-day use through smartphone technology, and will change the landscape of mental health prevention and early intervention for children and families.

Enrollment: 110 patients

Sex: All

Ages: 6 to 11 years old

Volunteers: Accepts Healthy Volunteers

Inclusion criteria

• Availability of mobile technology (e.g., smart phone, tablet)
• Internet access
• English language spoken in the home

Exclusion criteria

• Child in current or recent (last 2 months) psychotherapy
• Child currently taking psychotropic medication
• Parent or child endorsing symptom greater than 2 standard deviations above the mean on clinical measures
• Parents express feeling unable to assist child with current degree of symptoms

Trial design

Primary purpose: Prevention

Allocation: Randomized

Interventional model: Parallel Assignment

Masking: None (Open label)

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110 participants in 4 patient groups

1: Anchors Away

Experimental group

Description:

Family will receive access to the basic Anchors Away mobile app to test over 6 weeks.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Anchors Away

2: Parent Enhanced Anchors Away

Experimental group

Description:

Family will receive access to the Parent Enhanced Anchors Away mobile app to test over 6 weeks.

Treatment:

Behavioral: Parent Enhanced Anchors Away

3: Self-Help E-Book

Active Comparator group

Description:

Group 3 will receive the Self Help e-Book as a comparative condition (families provided a kindle version copy of "Helping Your Anxious Child: A Step-by-Step Guide" ; Rapee, Wignall, Spence, Lyneham, \& Cobham, 2008).

Treatment:

Behavioral: Self-Help E-Book

4: Waitlist Control

No Intervention group

Description:

Group 4 will not receive any intervention, but will be randomized into an active study arm at 6 weeks.