Student Is Dependent Upon Numerous

¶ … student is dependent upon numerous things, including the child's social-emotional status. Anxiety disorders incorporate themselves into a child's life in ways that school becomes a difficult task. Whether the child has problems leaving his or her parent, dealing with social situations, or just have anxiety in general, such disorders have a great and negative effect on their educational performance. In an effort to analyze the possible ways to deter such negative consequences, Jeffrey Wood of the University of California proposed an experiment to determine the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) on the intervention of anxiety disorders. The hopeful result would be a return to academic normalcy and positive performance.

Hypothesis

The main hypothesis of this study is that with a concentrated effort of CBT, whether it is family-based or child-based, anxiety levels will be reduced which will therefore lead to an increased ability to perform at school. The unit of measurement is the official anxiety test Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule for DSM-IV which would be given to all participants.

There are several ways to determine effectiveness in this study. First, the dependent variable was the CBT intervention therapy and the independent variables were the sex and ages of the participants. This could determine the effectiveness of treatment on children of various sexes and ages. Second, the dependent variable could be the participants and the independent variables could be the type of treatment - family-based or child-based. This could determine the overall effectiveness of the two types of anxiety intervention and therefore a more effective method. This same study could gauge also the effectiveness of parental involvement in the treatment of anxiety disorders since the family-based CBT directly includes the parents in the treatment whereas the child-based CBT does not.

Methodology

At the beginning of the study, parents agreed to participate and signed consent forms granting such permission. Children in the study were randomly put into one of two intervention groups: family-based cognitive-behavioral therapy or child-based cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). There is one major difference between the two types of intervention. With child-based CBT, the involvement of the parents is minimal consisting of only a 30-minute parent-education meeting and a few follow-up visits at the end of the treatment. With family-based CBT, the parents are involved throughout the process and are continuously educated with ways to help their child with the various coping strategies.

Both groups consisted of 12 to 16 sessions for 50 to 60 minutes each. In both situations, parents and teachers were notified of the study. The administrators of the study were mostly doctoral psychology students with one doctoral psychologist.

At the beginning of the study, the children were assessed using the Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule for DSM-IV, which is a partially pre-structured interview to determine the severity of the disorder being evaluated. In addition, both the children and the parents were given self-evaluations to further pinpoint the proper diagnosis. After the entirety of the intervention program, the children were reassessed with the same instrument as they were initially assessed, the Anxiety Disorders Interview Schedule for DSM-IV as well as the self-evaluations of the parents and children.

The two types of intervention were treated as the same since there were so many overlapping strategies. Rather, the independent variable was the treatment itself and the dependent variables were the sex and ages of the participants.

Sample

The 40 children who participated in this study were already diagnosed with some sort of anxiety disorder and were referred to the study by an outside source, including school psychologists, principals, and a medical center. The mean age for the participants was 9.85 years, ranging from six to 13 years of age. Post-referral an additional evaluation using the Diagnostive and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders and an independent evaluator determined that 27 suffered from separation anxiety disorder, 11 from generalized anxiety disorder, and 20 from social phobia.

Of the sample, 60% of them had had some sort of intervention therapy in the past. Eight of the children, or 20% of the sample, exhibited a school refusal, in which they missed over 40% of the past month as a result of emotional stress.

Of the 40 children referred to the study, 38 of them followed through with the study's intervention therapy, 24 boys and 14 girls. Parents were also included in the study, of which 87.5% of them were women, 87.5% of them were married, and 65% of them were college educated. A variety of ethnicities were represented with 60% Caucasian, 22.5% multiracial, 10% Hispanic, 2.5% African-American, and 2.5% Asian.

Results/Findings

The main hypothesis proposed was that CBT intervention therapy for anxiety disorders in children would result in a reduction in overall anxiety and therefore lead to increased school performance. Using the Anxiety Disorder Interview Schedule for DSM-IV before, during, and after the study, the results were graphed over time. The slopes were then analyzed to determine the extent of the decrease in the anxiety score, which showed a strong statistical slope indicting a large decrease in anxiety. This concludes the hypothesis that CBT therapy over time will decrease overall anxiety in school children.

In addition, previous discussion in the article stated that eight of the study's participants were missing 40% of the last month's school days for anxiety reasons. At the conclusion of the study, all of these students were able to return to school. Whereas the overall data showed that there was a significant decrease in anxiety over time for all participants, there was no suggestion in the data to differentiate these between male and female, resulting in no difference dependent on gender.

Conclusion

The author determined that the hypothesis was proven. Children do experience a reduction in anxiety with CBT intervention over time. However, this tends to lead towards increased attendance and functionality rather than actual academic performance. Whereas the outcome of the study was overwhelming, it may not be appropriate to generalize the findings to an entire population, due to sample size.

Overall Effectiveness

There were several things that could have increased the effectiveness of this study. First of all, the hypothesis was not pinpointed enough. The study should have been more of a study of the overall effectiveness of the two types of CBT intervention. Although the study did discuss that the two types have some overlapping elements, they are different methods altogether, with a great degree of variety of parental involvement. One thing proven that was not even hypothesized was the result that gender had no indication of success or failure of CBT intervention treatment for anxiety, meaning that the same treatment for both a boy and a girl could be assumed to come out the same, pending all other like variables.