Moderators of Outcome for Youth Anxiety Treatments: Current Findings and Future Directions

Objective: To improve outcomes and create more personalized interventions, the field has sought to identify moderators of treatment response (variables that specify which treatments work for whom and under what conditions). Method: The current review examines moderators of youth anxiety treatments. Results: The majority of studies to date have examined variables of convenience, including demographics (age, sex, race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status), pretreatment youth clinical characteristics (anxiety severity, principal diagnosis, comorbidity) and pretreatment parent variables (parent psychopathology, parenting). Findings indicate few consistent moderators. Conclusions: Future directions are discussed, including (a) group to individual generalizability, (b) power considerations, and (c) updates to study design and measure selection.