Utility of CBT for Children, Adolescents in Era of Accountable Care

Even with new classes of psychotropic medications on the horizon, targeted psychotherapy by appropriately trained mental health clinicians remains the safest and most efficacious treatment modality for many psychiatric disorders in the pediatric population, according to Eva Szigethy, M.D., an associate professor of psychiatry, pediatrics, and medicine at the University of Pittsburgh.

Although mood and behavioral disruptive disorders have biological underpinnings, the associated maladaptive coping styles can become engrained due to inadvertent behavioral conditioning. With the realization of how challenging it is for practitioners outside research settings to find opportunities to learn CBT for specific psychiatric and medical conditions, Szigethy, along with her colleagues John Weisz, Ph.D., a professor of psychology and prominent CBT clinical researcher at Harvard University, and Robert Findling, M.D., M.B.A, a professor and chief of child psychiatry at Johns Hopkins University, developed a practical training resource to teach CBT to mental health clinicians. This resource—Cognitive-Behavior Therapy for Children and Adolescents, published by American Psychiatric Publishing, provides comprehensive tools to help practitioners master CBT, with detailed empirically supported protocols for a range of pediatric psychopathology, case examples, and video demonstrations, she said.

In Szigethy’s annual meeting session, she focused on the nuances of learning CBT to treat youth, such as dealing with resistance in either the child or family, sensitivity to developmental and cultural differences, and challenging psychiatric clinical issues such as suicidality and defiance, as well as comorbid medical problems such as pain and obesity. Greater use of high-quality CBT interventions, she said, can help reverse ineffective patterns of behaviors and thinking, leading to remission and prevention of current and future episodes, thus enhancing the child's success in life while reducing health utilization costs of these life-long conditions.

APA members may purchase Cognitive-Behavior Therapy for Children and Adolescents at a discount here.