Cognitive behavioral and attachment based family therapy for anxious adolescents: Phase I and II studies

The goals of these two studies were to assess the acceptability and feasibility as well as to gather preliminary efficacy data on a modified combination cognitive behavioral (CBT) and attachment based family therapy (ABFT) for adolescents (ages 12–18), with the primary diagnosis of generalized (GAD), social phobia (SP), and separation (SAD) anxiety disorders. In Phase I, CBT was modified for an adolescent population and ABFT was modified for working with anxious adolescents in combination with CBT. Therapists were trained for both conditions and eight patients were treated as an open trial pilot of combined CBT-ABFT with positive results. In Phase II, 11 adolescents were randomly assigned to CBT alone or CBT and family based treatment (CBT-ABFT). Participants were evaluated at pre, post, and 6–9 months follow-up assessing diagnosis, psychiatric symptoms and family functioning. Results indicated significant decreases in anxiety and depressive symptoms by both clinical evaluator and self-reports with no significant differences by treatment. Sixty-seven percent of adolescents in CBT no longer met criteria for their primary diagnosis at post treatment as compared to 40% in CBT-ABFT with continued improvement of 100 and 80% at follow-up with no significant differences between treatments. Both CBT and CBT-ABFT appear to be promising treatments for anxious adolescents and more treatment development and evaluation is needed.