Research review: Recommendations for reporting on treatment trials for child and adolescent anxiety disorders—An international consensus statement

Abstract

Background: Anxiety disorders in children and young people are common and bring significant personal and societal costs. Over the last two decades, there has been a substantial increase in research evaluating psychological and pharmacological treatments for anxiety disorders in children and young people and exciting and novel research has continued as the field strives to improve efficacy and effectiveness, and accessibility of interventions. This increase in research brings potential to draw together data across studies to compare treatment approaches and advance understanding of what works, how, and for whom. There are challenges to these efforts due largely to variation in studies’ outcome measures and variation in the way study characteristics are reported, making it difficult to compare and/or combine studies, and this is likely to lead to faulty conclusions. Studies particularly vary in their reliance on child, parent, and/or assessor-based ratings across a range of outcomes, including remission of anxiety diagnosis, symptom reduction, and other domains of functioning (e.g., family relationships, peer relationships). Methods: To address these challenges, we convened a series of international activities that brought together the views of key stakeholders (i.e., researchers, mental health professionals, young people, parents/caregivers) to develop recommendations for outcome measurement to be used in treatment trials for anxiety disorders in children and young people. Results and Conclusions: This article reports the results of these activities and offers recommendations for selection and reporting of outcome measures to (a) guide future research and (b) improve communication of what has been measured and reported. We offer these recommendations to promote international consistency in trial reporting and to enable the field to take full advantage of the great opportunities that come from data sharing going forward. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)Department of Experimental Psychology, University of Oxford, Oxford, United Kingdom. Other Publishers: Blackwell Publishing; Cambridge University Press; Elsevier Science; Pergamon Press. Release Date: 20200723. Correction Date: 20210318. Publication Type: Journal (0100), Peer Reviewed Journal (0110). Format Covered: Electronic. Document Type: Journal Article. Language: EnglishMajor Descriptor: Anxiety; Anxiety Disorders; Parent Child Relations; Peer Relations; Treatment. Minor Descriptor: Drug Therapy; Measurement; Rating. Classification: Neuroses & Anxiety Disorders (3215). Population: Human (10). Age Group: Childhood (birth-12 yrs) (100); Adolescence (13-17 yrs) (200). Page Count: 15. Issue Publication Date: Mar, 2021. Publication History: Accepted Date: May 12, 2020. Copyright Statement: Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The Authors—Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. 2020. <br />