University of Georgia, Athens, GA, USA.
J Abnorm Child Psychol. 2018 Apr;46(3):569-580. doi: 10.1007/s10802-017-0319-0.
Difficulties with emotion regulation are a core feature of anxiety disorders (ADs) in children and adults. Interventions with a specific focus on emotion regulation are gaining empirical support. Yet, no studies to date have compared the relative efficacy of such interventions to existing evidence-based treatments. Such comparisons are necessary to determine whether emotion-focused treatments might be more effective for youth exhibiting broad emotion-regulation difficulties at pretreatment. This study examined an emotion-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy (ECBT) protocol in comparison to traditional cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) in a sample of children with a primary anxiety disorder diagnosis. Moderation analyses examined whether children with higher levels of emotion dysregulation at pretreatment would show greater levels of improvement in ECBT than CBT. Ninety-two youth ages 7 to 12 years (58% male) with a primary diagnosis of separation anxiety disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, or social phobia were included. Participants were randomly assigned to ECBT or CBT. Results showed that youth in both conditions demonstrated similar improvements in emotion regulation and that pretreatment levels of emotion dysregulation did not moderate treatment outcomes. Additional analyses showed that ECBT and CBT were similarly effective on diagnostic, severity, and improvement measures. Future work is needed to further explore the ways that emotion regulation is related to treatment outcome for anxious youth.
情绪调节困难是儿童和成人焦虑障碍（AD）的核心特征。特别关注情绪调节的干预措施正在获得实证支持。然而，迄今为止，尚无研究比较这些干预措施与现有循证治疗的相对疗效。这种比较对于确定情绪为重点的治疗方法是否对治疗前表现出广泛情绪调节困难的年轻人更有效是必要的。本研究在一组患有原发性焦虑障碍的儿童中，将情绪为重点的认知行为疗法（ECBT）与传统认知行为疗法（CBT）进行了比较。调节分析检查了治疗前情绪失调程度较高的儿童在 ECBT 中是否会比 CBT 有更大程度的改善。92 名年龄在 7 至 12 岁之间（58%为男性）的儿童，主要诊断为分离焦虑症、广泛性焦虑症或社交恐惧症，他们被随机分配到 ECBT 或 CBT 组。结果表明，两种情况下的青少年在情绪调节方面都有类似的改善，而且治疗前的情绪失调水平并没有调节治疗结果。进一步的分析表明，ECBT 和 CBT 在诊断、严重程度和改善措施上同样有效。未来的工作需要进一步探讨情绪调节与焦虑青少年治疗结果之间的关系。
