Last month, the Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry released a study that I can’t stop talking about. The study compared rates of anxiety symptoms in kids whose parents received treatment through Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions (SPACE) with individual cognitive behavior therapy, the historic gold standard for treating anxiety. SPACE focuses on treating the parents of an anxious child rather than treating the child. This study shows that SPACE is just as effective at reducing a child’s anxiety symptoms as individual therapy.
This means that a parents-only intervention can be as effective as treating the child itself. Finally! We have the evidence to support what many of us therapists have known for years.
I’m excited about this for a variety of reasons. First, any parent of an anxious child knows the feeling of helplessness all too well. This gives us an action to take. It gives us another option. Second, getting a child into therapy can be difficult, and now parents know they may not have to. And third, as a cognitive behavior therapist who has used SPACE to help parents and their children, I’ve seen it work firsthand and am ecstatic for scientific proof of its effectiveness.
What is Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions?
SPACE is a parents-only treatment designed to work on changing parents’ behavior toward their anxious child. The program was designed to be 12 weeks, but I’ve done it in 8 or 10 sessions with great outcomes, so it can be modified. A colleague and I were trained by Eli Lebowitz, PhD., at the Yale School of Medicine’s Child Study Center. We’ve also experienced great results in running SPACE in group and boot camp formats.
What are the objectives?
SPACE has two goals: to learn skills to decrease accommodation and to increase supportive communication. Parents learn a process by which they stop giving in to their child’s anxiety. One word of caution (because I know we as parents can so easily fall into this trap) — don’t beat yourself up. It’s intuitive for us to want to reassure, soothe and regulate our child’s emotions. After all, that’s our job when they’re infants. As our kids grow, however, what seems intuitive actually makes their anxiety worse. Our job evolves into teaching them how to regulate their own emotions and face the things that scare them.
What are these results?
SPACE gives parents another evidence-based option for treatment, which is great if their kids don’t want to go to therapy, if they can’t find a CBT therapist in their area, and/or to complement their child’s therapy. Another interesting result the parents in the SPACE treatment program received was that they felt like their relationship with their children improved. Parents whom I’ve personally treated tell me that SPACE helped them to feel empowered, because they now know how to respond with their kid, whereas before they felt relegated to the proverbial (and sometimes literal) waiting room.
According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, anxiety disorders affect one in eight children. If you want to know more about the SPACE treatment model, please visit me at joannahardis.com or contact me at 216-600-8696.
