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Among clinicians, it is common practice to include parents in treatment, and it has been taken for granted that parents' involvement in their children's treatment is beneficial for therapy outcome, although research on this issue is far from clear. A meta-analysis was carried out in order to investigate whether parent involvement potentiates the outcome for children with anxiety disorders when treated with cognitive–behavior therapy. Sixteen studies, which directly compared parent-involved treatments with child-only treatments, were included in the meta-analysis. The results showed a small, nonsignificant effect size of ? 0.10 in favor of the child-only treatments. There was no indication of publication bias in the analysis. Implications of the results are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: International guidelines recommend Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) as the first line treatment for pediatric obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). However, a substantial proportion of patients do not have access to such treatment. We developed and tested the feasibility, efficacy and acceptability of a novel therapist-guided, Internet-delivered CBT (ICBT) platform for adolescents with OCD. Methods: An interactive, age-appropriate ICBT platform (“BiP OCD”) was developed. Twenty-one adolescents (12–17 years) with a DSM-IV diagnosis of OCD and their parents were enrolled in the study. All participants received 12 weeks of ICBT with therapist support. The primary outcome measure was the Children’s Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (CY-BOCS). Acceptability was assessed at post-treatment. Results: Participants completed on average 8.29 (SD = 3.0) of the 12 treatment chapters. Treatment yielded significant improvements on all clinician-, parent- and most self-administered outcome measures, with a large effect size of d = 2.29 (95% CI 1.5–3.07) on the CY-BOCS. Patients continued to improve at follow-up. At 6-month follow-up, 71% were classified as responders (≥35% decrease on the CY-BOCS) and 76% as being in remission (CY-BOCS score ≤12). Average clinician support time was less than 20 minutes per patient per week. The majority of participants felt that BiP OCD was age-appropriate and rated the treatment as good or very good. Conclusions: ICBT could be efficacious, acceptable, and cost-effective for adolescents with OCD. More rigorously controlled studies are needed to further evaluate the treatment. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov; NCT01809990. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective This study investigated the long-term outcomes of internet-delivered cognitive behavior therapy (ICBT) for children with anxiety disorders, and potential pre-treatment predictors of treatment outcome. Method The sample included eighty-four children (8–12 years old) with anxiety disorders, from both a treatment group and a waitlist control (after participants had crossed over to treatment) of a previous randomized controlled study. Participants were assessed at post-treatment and three- and twelve-months after treatment using a semi-structured interview and parent ratings. Pre-treatment data were used to investigate predictors of treatment outcome at three-month follow-up. Results Intention-to-treat analysis showed that treatment gains were maintained at twelve-month follow-up, including clinician rated severity of the principal anxiety disorder, parent rated anxiety symptoms and global functioning, with mainly large effect sizes (Cohen's d = 0.63–2.35). Completer analyses showed that suspected autism spectrum disorder was associated with less change in symptom severity. No other pre-treatment measures significantly predicted treatment outcome. Conclusion This study suggests that internet-delivered CBT can have long-term beneficial effects for children with anxiety disorders. Predictors of treatment outcome need to be evaluated further. Trial registration Clinicaltrials.gov; NCT01533402 . [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]