Pre-treatment child and family characteristics as predictors of outcome in cognitive behavioural
therapy for youth anxiety disorders
Sammanfattning
Background : Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) has been found to be effective for children
and adolescents (6 -18 years) with anxiety disorders, but the non-response rate is high - a fact
that may argue for the importance of studies on pre-treatment characteristics of children and
their families that predict treatment outcome. Aims : To provide a systematic review of clinical
and demographic pre-treatment child and family predictors of treatment outcome in CBT for
anxiety disorders in youth. Method : A systematic literature search was conducted based on
electronic databases (PsycINFO, Embase and PubMed), and retrieved studies were analysed
according to the box-score method of counting signifi cant fi ndings. Results : 24 studies with a
sample size 60 were located. Most studies dealt with the following predictors: child age,
gender, comorbidity, symptom severity and parental psychopathology. There was some evidence
that a higher degree of pre-treatment symptomatic severity and non-anxiety comorbidity
predicted higher end-state severity, but not a lesser degree of improvement. There was some but
inconsistent support for a negative infl uence of parental psychopathology. Conclusion: Studies
on pre-treatment child and family predictors of outcome in CBT for youth anxiety disorders
have until now resulted in few fi ndings of clinical or theoretical signifi cance.