(PS5-61) Youth-caregiver Discrepancies in Anxiety Severity and Anxiety Impact: Treatment Outcomes

Objective: Caregivers and youth are discrepant when reporting on youth mental health. How do discrepancies in anxiety severity and anxiety impact ratings relate to outcomes from different treatments?

Method: Participants were 438 youths aged 7–17 years who participated in the Child and Adolescent Multimodal Study (CAMS). Youths and their caregiver(s) completed (separately) a diagnostic interview and youth- and caregiver-report measures at pre- and post-treatment. Youth-caregiver discrepancy scores for these measures were computed. Multiple regressions examined the association between discrepancies on (a) anxiety severity as indexed by the diagnostic interview and (b) anxiety impact as indexed by a self-report questionnaire and treatment outcome, measured by the (a) Pediatric Anxiety Rating Scale (PARS) and (b) the Clinical Global Impressions-Improvement (CGI-I) scale for youth who received cognitive behavior therapy (CBT; Coping cat), medication (SRT; sertraline), their combination (Combo), or pill placebo (Pbo).

Results: As hypothesized, caregiver-youth severity discrepancies for youths who received an active treatment predicted less favorable treatment outcomes, but this was the case only for youths with a specific phobia (SP) who received SRT.Youth-caregiver discrepancy scores on anxiety-impact ratings did not predict treatment outcomes.

Discussion: The present findings highlight that caregiver-youth discrepancies in severity have treatment implications. Furthermore, the results suggest that discrepancies in anxiety impact may be inconsequential to treatment outcomes, regardless of the treatment condition. Further research on the clinical utility of these treatment implications is needed.