5 - (SYM 78) Can We Identify Treatment Ingredients That Are Associated with Better Outcomes in CBT for Childhood Anxiety Disorders?

The current presentation will look into the relative contribution of specific treatment ingredients of CBT in children and young people with anxiety disorders, as well as different treatment or setting characteristics. We aimed to identify treatment characteristics and treatment ingredients that are associated with better outcomes.

Through systematic review, we identified 61 studies on CBT outcome in childhood anxiety disorders (representing n=5755). We studied the treatment manuals used in each individual trial and rated the treatment characteristics as well as the presence of treatment ingredients.

Parent and child rated improvement on anxiety symptomatology was extracted from each trial and effect sizes were calculated. Then, a meta-regression analysis was performed to identify treatment characteristics and ingredients associated with treatment outcome.

In general, trials including referred children were associated with less treatment gains than those recruiting participants. Those treatments that explicitly included modelling and relapse prevention strategies had better outcome, whereas those using material reward systems had slightly less beneficial outcomes. Clinical implications will be discussed.

Moreover, we will show the potential of taking the evaluation of treatment characteristics and ingredients to a next level in an individual patient data meta-analysis, providing some preliminary findings based on the international PADDY platform.