Anxiety symptom trajectories from treatment to 5- to 12-year follow-up across childhood and adolescence
Abstract
OBJECTIVE
The current study examined trajectories of anxiety during (a) acute treatment and (b) extended follow-up to better characterize the long-term symptom trajectories of youth who received evidence-based intervention for anxiety disorders using a person-centered approach.
METHOD
Participants were 319 youth (age 7-17 years at enrollment), who participated in a multicenter randomized controlled trial for the treatment of pediatric anxiety disorders, Child/Adolescent Anxiety Multimodal Study, and a 4-year naturalistic follow-up, Child/Adolescent Anxiety Multimodal Extended Long-term Study, an average of 6.5 years later. Using growth mixture modeling, the study identified distinct trajectories of anxiety across acute treatment (Weeks 0-12), posttreatment (Weeks 12-36), and the 4-year-long follow-up, and identified baseline predictors of these trajectories.
RESULTS
Three nonlinear anxiety trajectories emerged: "short-term responders" who showed rapid treatment response but had higher levels of anxiety during the extended follow-up; "durable responders" who sustained treatment gains; and "delayed remitters" who did not show an initial response to treatment, but showed low levels of anxiety during the maintenance and extended follow-up periods. Worse anxiety severity and better family functioning at baseline predicted membership in the delayed remitters group. Caregiver strain differentiated short-term responders from durable responders.
CONCLUSIONS
Findings suggest that…
How strong is the evidence?
Evidence Hub reads this as a randomized trial, done in people. Its evidence level is 2 of 5 (High · randomized trial). Randomized trials of a reasonable size are the strongest single-study design.
Read the paper
Related studies
- Characterization and Analysis of Porosity and Pore Structures
- Practical considerations for conducting ecotoxicity test methods with manufactured nanomaterials: what have we learnt so far?
- Dental Optical Coherence Tomography
- Radiation-shielding concrete: A review of materials, performance, and the impact of radiation on concrete properties
- Testing entanglement of annihilation photons
- Calanus finmarchicus seasonal cycle and diapause in relation to gene expression, physiology, and endogenous clocks
Go deeper in Evidence Hub
Evidence Hub adds a study data sheet (design, sample size, evidence level, key numbers), an AI summary and a chat grounded in the paper's text.