Predictors of Treatment Effectiveness for Youth with ASD and Comorbid Anxiety Disorders: It all Depends on the Family?
F J A van Steensel, V M Zegers, S M Bögels
PMID 28004234WHAT IT FOUND
Children with ASD and anxiety improved after CBT.
Child age and gender did not predict improvement. Children of anxious fathers started with less severe anxiety disorders but showed smaller later reductions, and family type affected symptom scores inconsistently.
Key findings
01Total anxiety disorder severity and anxiety symptom scores decreased after CBT at post-treatment and follow-ups.
02Child gender and age were not related to anxiety severity or treatment effectiveness, and pre-treatment child psychopathology was not related to treatment effectiveness.
03Maternal anxiety did not predict outcome, while paternal anxiety and family type were associated with some anxiety outcomes.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for SLPs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The study was exploratory and did not compare children with ASD who received CBT with an untreated control group, so it cannot separate treatment effects from natural change over time. Follow-up numbers fell from 79 at pre-assessment to 76 after treatment, 66 at 3 months, 63 at 1 year and 58 at 2 years. The sample was relatively small, and predictors were tested one at a time, so the study could not compare which predictor mattered most or test interactions between predictors. Family types were created by splitting the sample scores in half, not by established cut-offs, so it is unclear how extreme the family types were. Children with IQ less than 70 were excluded, and other factors such as parental ASD symptoms were not measured, so the results may not apply to children with lower IQ or families with other conditions. Findings varied between anxiety disorder severity and anxiety symptom measures and across follow-up points, so firm conclusions are difficult. The ADI-R was administered to 60 children, not the whole sample.
Declared interests
No author conflict-of-interest statement is provided. The supplied funding line names Journal of autism and developmental disorders (2017).
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the paternal anxiety or family type findings as proven causes of CBT response. The study was exploratory, had no untreated control group, and the significant findings varied by outcome measure and follow-up point.