Journal Article
The article is known as “ Cognitive-behavioral therapy for youth anxiety: An effectiveness evaluation in community practice ” and is published under the United States National Institute of Health. The goal of the article is to evaluate the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) for youths with anxiety as their mental health concern. The authors focus on two modes of CBT, including the individual and the group CBT. The author concludes that among the two strategies, group CBT (GCBT) was more effective compared to individual (ICBT) in treating social anxiety disorder and generalized anxiety disorder (Villabø, Narayanan, Compton, Kendall, & Neumer, 2018).
Description of the Intervention
CBT is among the most utilized mental health interventions and has universal implications. As such, it has since been applied to various mental health problems. Hofmann et al. (2012) say, “CBT refers to a class of interventions that share the basic premise that mental disorders and psychological distress are maintained by cognitive factors.” Aaron T. Beck was responsible for the formulation of this mental health treatment strategy in the 1960s. CBT is premised on the cognitive theory which asserts that behavioral problems and emotional distress emanate from continued maladaptive cognitions. Beck went ahead and mentioned the maladaptive cognition as factors such as schemas or general beliefs about the self, world, and the future (Hofmann et al., 2012). CBT encompasses several family interventions that combine a host of cognitive, emotional, and behavioral techniques. Other than capitalizing on the behavioral aspects, this technique employs behavioral, emotional, and psychological components that might contribute to the disorder (Mitchell et al., 2012).
Delegate your assignment to our experts and they will do the rest.
David, Cristea, & Hofmann (2018) assert that CBT is the gold standard for treating psychological problems. As such, no other psychological intervention has proven to better than CBT. Two major strategies are used in CBT including the individual CBT and the group CBT. Individual CBT is where the mental health patient undergoes treatment on their own. Group CBT involves grouping an individual with other individuals with the same mental health problem. CBT has been applied with great success in mental health problems such as depression, major depression disorder, anxiety, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder among many others. The success behind this strategy is based on the fact that it involves identifying the negative emotions, thereby giving an individual the strength to find positive alternative emotions. It occurs in the form of talk therapy and can be given by a psychiatrist, counselor, or a mental health nurse (Zettle & Hayes, 2015).
Evaluation of the Plan
The primary mental health concern under investigation was anxiety, separated as social anxiety disorder and generalized anxiety disorder. The goal was to find out the effectiveness of the CBT among youths with this mental health concern. The CBT models in question included the ICBT and GCBT. A randomized controlled study was used for this study. Randomization was used as the preferred method of sampling. The treatment in the two conditions comprised of 14 sessions delivered for 12 weeks (Villabø et al., 2018). The goal of the treatment was to expose the participants to factors that would cause them anxiety. For instance, parents would be required to drop off the child from school and proceed to run an errand. Another technique was to expose them to strangers or new people they have never met before. In a bid to assess the fidelity of the treatment, the sessions were video-recorded. The rating of the sessions followed the CBT Youth Adherence and Competence Scale. Adherence was rated from 0 to 6, where 0 represented “poor” and 6 showed “thorough.” Competence was also ranked the same with 0 representing “poor” and 6 representing “excellent.” After the development of the statistical values such as mean, mode, median, and variance, statistical analyses using SAS PROC FREQ to determine the effectiveness of the CBT model out of the two (Villabø et al., 2018).
Critique
Villabø et al. (2018) say, “To evaluate whether one treatment was more effective for a specific anxiety disorder, a series of pairwise comparisons were undertaken.” The effectiveness of this strategy stems from its comparative value. Although the focus is on CBT as a technique, special attention is paid to both individual and the group versions. Through mathematical representation and the use of software such as SAS PROC FREQ, each of the strategies is given a coefficient. Based on the outcome, the authors conclude that group CBT is more effective compared to the individual CBT in patients with an anxiety disorder. The goal of the treatment was to expose the children to their anxiety risk factors, after which they are engaged in a thorough treatment for 12 weeks non-stop. Both there adherence and competence were put into a measurement.
In asserting the validity of the intervention, Villabø et al., (2018) noted that therapists, parents, and children were satisfied with the treatment. Across all the informants, the levels of satisfaction remained significantly high. From a general point of view, the use of CBT improved the children’s anxiety statuses. Group therapy was found to be more effective, especially for social anxiety disorder. Therefore, CBT is highly recommended for children showing anxiety signs. CBT was also reliable on several grounds. The outcomes of the patients between ICBT and GCBT showed some form of consistency. On repeating the test, individual consistent tests were also recorded for the participants. As such, all the methodologies used for this test exuded a sense of reliability and validity.
References
David, D., Cristea, I., & Hofmann, S. G. (2018). Why cognitive behavioral therapy is the current gold standard of psychotherapy. Frontiers in psychiatry, 9, 4.
Hofmann, S. G., Asnaani, A., Vonk, I. J., Sawyer, A. T., & Fang, A. (2012). The efficacy of cognitive-behavioral therapy: A review of meta-analyses. Cognitive therapy and research, 36(5), 427-440.
Mitchell, M. D., Gehrman, P., Perlis, M., & Umscheid, C. A. (2012). Comparative effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy for insomnia: a systematic review. BMC family practice, 13(1), 40.
Villabø, M. A., Narayanan, M., Compton, S. N., Kendall, P. C., & Neumer, S. P. (2018). Cognitive-behavioral therapy for youth anxiety: An effectiveness evaluation in community practice. Journal of consulting and clinical psychology, 86(9), 751.
Zettle, R. D., & Hayes, S. C. (2015). Rule-governed behavior: A potential theoretical framework for cognitive-behavioral therapy. In The Act in Context (pp. 33-63). Routledge.
