TY  - JOUR
AU  - Sung, Jenna Y
AU  - Mumper, Emma
AU  - Schleider, Jessica Lee
PY  - 2021
DA  - 2021/7/6
TI  - Empowering Anxious Parents to Manage Child Avoidance Behaviors: Randomized Control Trial of a Single-Session Intervention for Parental Accommodation
JO  - JMIR Ment Health
SP  - e29538
VL  - 8
IS  - 7
KW  - acceptability
KW  - adolescent mental health
KW  - adolescent
KW  - anxiety
KW  - avoidance
KW  - behavior
KW  - child mental health
KW  - children
KW  - digital mental health
KW  - intervention
KW  - mental health
KW  - parent
KW  - prevention
KW  - young adult
AB  - Background: A majority of youth who need anxiety treatment never access support. This disparity reflects a need for more accessible, scalable interventions—particularly those that may prevent anxiety in high-risk children, mitigating future need for higher-intensity care. Self-guided single-session interventions (SSIs) may offer a promising path toward this goal, given their demonstrated clinical utility, potential for disseminability, and low cost. However, existing self-guided SSIs have been designed for completion by adolescents already experiencing symptoms, and their potential for preventing anxiety in children—for instance, by mitigating known anxiety risk factors—remains unexplored. Objective: This trial evaluated the acceptability and proximal effects of project EMPOWER: a web-based, self-guided SSI designed to reduce parental accommodation, a parenting behavior known to increase the risk of anxiety in offspring. Methods: In total, 301 parents who reported elevated anxiety symptoms with children aged 4-10 years received either project EMPOWER or an informational control (containing psychoeducational materials and resources); parents self-reported their accommodation of child anxiety and overall distress tolerance at baseline and 2-week follow-up. Results: Relative to control-group parents, those who received the intervention outlined in project EMPOWER reported significant reductions in their accommodation of child anxiety (ds=0.61; P<.001) and significant increases in their distress tolerance (ds=0.43; P<.001) from baseline to 2-week follow-up. Additionally, parents rated project EMPOWER as highly acceptable (ie, easy to use, helpful, and engaging) in accordance with preregistered benchmarks. Conclusions: Project EMPOWER is an acceptable self-guided SSI for parents of children at-risk for anxiety, which yields proximal reductions in clinically relevant targets. Trial Registration: ClinicalTrials.gov NCT04453865; https://tinyurl.com/4h84j8t9 
SN  - 2368-7959
UR  - https://mental.jmir.org/2021/7/e29538
UR  - https://doi.org/10.2196/29538
UR  - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34255718
DO  - 10.2196/29538
ID  - info:doi/10.2196/29538
ER  -