Improving interventions for anxious youth: developing understanding and treatment of parents' cognitions and behaviours

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Cognitive-behaviour therapy (CBT) is a treatment approach that has achieved tremendous success in the treatment of many psychological disorders. It specifically focuses on helping patients to change their thinking styles and behaviours to help them to overcome distress. In recent years the approach has been imported to work with children, with varying degrees of success. One explanation for the mixed results is likely to relate to how children‘s caregivers are involved in the treatment. A good example of this is the treatment of child anxiety, in which treatment outcomes have varied enormously across studies (39-84% remitted following treatment). In recent years parental thinking styles and behaviours have been identified that may contribute to the development of emotional problems in young people. Based on a series of experiments with clinical and non-clinical groups of people, the proposed research aims to identify key thinking styles experienced by parents of clinically anxious children and examine how these thinking styles influence parents‘ behaviours, and consequently how children feel and behave. This research has the potential to have a significant impact on the development of clinical practice by providing understanding and therapeutic techniques for the successful adaptation of CBT to young populations.