Maintenance Notice

Due to necessary scheduled maintenance, the JMIR Publications website will be unavailable from Wednesday, July 01, 2020 at 8:00 PM to 10:00 PM EST. We apologize in advance for any inconvenience this may cause you.

Who will be affected?

Accepted for/Published in: JMIR Mental Health

Date Submitted: Feb 16, 2021
Date Accepted: Apr 15, 2021

The final, peer-reviewed published version of this preprint can be found here:

Trajectories of Change in an Open-access Internet-Based Cognitive Behavior Program for Childhood and Adolescent Anxiety: Open Trial

March S, Batterham PJ, Rowe A, Donovan C, Calear A, Spence SH

Trajectories of Change in an Open-access Internet-Based Cognitive Behavior Program for Childhood and Adolescent Anxiety: Open Trial

JMIR Ment Health 2021;8(6):e27981

DOI: 10.2196/27981

PMID: 34142971

PMCID: 8277375

Trajectories of Change in an Open-Access Internet-Based Cognitive Behaviour Program for Childhood and Adolescent Anxiety: Open Trial

  • Sonja March; 
  • Philip J Batterham; 
  • Arlen Rowe; 
  • Caroline Donovan; 
  • Alison Calear; 
  • Susan H Spence

ABSTRACT

Background:

Although evidence for the efficacy of internet-based cognitive behaviour therapy (iCBT) in the treatment of childhood anxiety has continued to grow, there is scant empirical research investigating the timing of benefits made in iCBT programs (e.g. early or delayed).

Objective:

The objective of our study was to examine patterns of symptom trajectories (changes in anxiety) across an iCBT program for anxiety (BRAVE Self-Help).

Methods:

Participants were 10,366 Australian youth with elevated anxiety aged 7-17 years (4,140 children aged 7-12 years; 6,226 adolescents aged 12-17 years) who registered for the BRAVE Self-Help program. Participants self-reported on their anxiety symptoms at baseline/Session 1 and then at the commencement of each subsequent session.

Results:

Results found that young people completing the BRAVE Self-Help program tend to fall into two trajectory classes that can be reliably identified in terms of high versus medium baseline levels of anxiety and subsequent reduction in symptoms. Both high and medium anxiety severity trajectory classes show significant reductions in anxiety, with the greatest level of change being achieved within the first six sessions for both classes. However, those in the moderate anxiety severity class tend to show reductions in anxiety symptoms to levels below the elevated range, whereas those in the high symptom group tend to remain in the elevated range despite improvements.

Conclusions:

These findings suggest that those in the high severity group who are not responding well to iCBT on a self-help basis, may benefit from additional support provided alongside the program or a stepped-care approach where progress is monitored and support can be provided as necessary. Clinical Trial: n/a


 Citation

Please cite as:

March S, Batterham PJ, Rowe A, Donovan C, Calear A, Spence SH

Trajectories of Change in an Open-access Internet-Based Cognitive Behavior Program for Childhood and Adolescent Anxiety: Open Trial

JMIR Ment Health 2021;8(6):e27981

DOI: 10.2196/27981

PMID: 34142971

PMCID: 8277375

Download PDF


Request queued. Please wait while the file is being generated. It may take some time.

© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.