The modular approach outperformed usual care and standard evidence-based treatments on multiple clinical outcome measures. The modular approach may be a promising way to build on the strengths of evidence-based treatments, improving their utility and effectiveness with referred youths in clinical practice settings. Trial Registration  clinicaltrials.gov Identifier: NCT01178554.

This study applied the distillation and matching model to 322 randomized clinical trials for child mental health treatments. The model involved initial data reduction of 615 treatment protocol descriptions by means of a set of codes describing discrete clinical strategies, referred to as practice elements. Practice elements were then summarized in profiles, which were empirically matched to client factors (i.e., observed problem, age, gender, and ethnicity). Results of a profile similarity analysis demonstrated a branching of the literature into multiple problem areas, within which some age and ethnicity special cases emerged as higher order splits. This is the 1st study to aggregate evidence-based treatment protocols empirically according to their constituent treatment procedures, and the results point both to the overall organization of therapy procedures according to matching factors and to gaps in the current child and adolescent treatment literature.

A model is proposed whereby the intervention literature can be empirically factored or distilled to derive profiles from evidence-based approaches. The profiles can then be matched to individual clients based on consideration of their target problems, as well as demographic and contextual factors. Application of the model is illustrated by an analysis of the youth treatment literature. Benefits of the model include its potential to facilitate improved understanding of similarities and differences among treatments, to guide treatment selection and matching to clients, to address gaps in the literature, and to point to possibilities for new interventions based on the current research base.

This updated review of evidence-based treatments follows the original review performed by the Hawaii Task Force. Over 750 treatment protocols from 435 studies were coded and rated on a 5-level strength of evidence system. Results showed large numbers of evidencebased treatments applicable to anxiety, attention, autism, depression, disruptive behavior, eating problems, substance use, and traumatic stress. Treatments were reviewed in terms of diversity of client characteristics, treatment settings and formats, therapist characteristics, and other variables potentially related to feasibility and generalizability. Overall, the literature has expanded considerably since the previous review, yielding a growing list of options and information available to guide decisions about treatment selection.

No abstract

No abstract

This study provides preliminary tests of two hypotheses: (1) Anxiety-disordered children show an attentional bias toward emotionally threatening stimuli, and (2) normal controls show an attentional bias away from emotionally threatening stimuli. Twelve children, 9 to 14 years of age, with primary diagnoses of anxiety disorder were compared with 12 normal controls matched for age, gender, vocabulary level, and reading ability. Subjects completed a reaction time task that measured visual attention toward threatening versus neutral words. The anxious group showed the predicted attentional bias toward threat words. However, controls did not show the predicted bias away from threat words. These results are the first showing that biased attentional processing occurs among clinically anxious children. The potential role of such an attentional bias in childhood anxiety disorders and future direction for research are discussed.

American newspaper journalists (N = 906) participated in a study examining a cognitive mediational model for explaining the relationship between exposure to work-related traumatic events and work-related posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Results indicated (a) greater exposure to work-related traumatic events was associated with work-related PTSD symptoms, as well as negative cognitive schemas; (b) cognitive beliefs partially accounted for PTSD symptoms, but the full cognitive mediational model was not supported. Implications include targeting interventions for journalists who experience traumatic stress and modifying theories about PTSD symptoms in journalists.