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Evaluation ViewAttendees 2

Child / Adolescent - Anxiety
Session Type:: Symposia

Symposium 33 - Using Research Findings to Extend Treatment’s Effectiveness and Reach: Examples from Pediatric Anxiety & OCD

Saturday, November 22, 2025
10:00 AM - 11:30 AM CST
Location: Strand 9, Level 2
CE: 1.5

Keywords: Anxiety, OCD (Obsessive Compulsive Disorder), CBT
Level of Familiarity: Basic to Moderate
Recommended Readings: Franklin, M. E., Engelmann, J. M., Bulkes, N. Z., Horvath, G., Piacsek, K., Osterlund, E., Freeman, J. B., Schwartz, R., Himle, M., & Riemann, B. C. (2024). Intensive CBT telehealth for pediatric OCD during the COVID-19 pandemic: Comparison with a matched sample treated in person. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Open, 2(1), 26-35.,   Freitag, G. F., Salem, H., Conroy, K., Busto, C., Adrian, M., Borba, C. P. C., . . . Comer, J. S. (2023). The patient-reported outcomes measurement information system (PROMIS) pediatric and parent-proxy short forms for anxiety: Psychometric properties in the kids FACE FEARS sample. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 94, 1-9. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2023.102677,   Kemp, J., Barker, D., Benito, K., Herren, J., & Freeman, J. (2021). Moderators of psychosocial treatment for pediatric obsessive-compulsive disorder: Summary and recommendations for future directions. Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 50(4), 478-485. doi:https://doi.org/10.1080/15374416.2020.1790378,   Schwartz, R. A. (2018). Treating incompleteness in obsessive-compulsive disorder: A meta-analytic review. Journal of Obsessive-Compulsive and Related Disorders, 19, 50-60. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jocrd.2018.08.001,  

In the wake of the global pandemic and given the pernicious effects of anxiety, OCD, and related conditions across the developmental spectrum, the need to develop more effective treatments for mental health conditions and to provide them to patients who need them has never been more acute. Further, greater symptom severity, psychiatric comorbidity, and associated impairments have collectively posed access to care challenges at the higher levels of care - partial hospitalization (PHP) and intensive outpatient (IOP) - that are often recommended to manage these increasingly complex presentations. In the proposed symposium, data from four investigative teams will be presented: pediatric OCD (Dr. Franklin @ Rogers), pediatric anxiety (Dr. Herren @ Brown & Dr. Comer at FIU), and adult OCD (Dr. Schwartz @ Rogers). As described in detail in the individual abstracts, findings across each of these conditions were generally supportive of treatment effectiveness across levels of care. In addition, the data presented herein offer support for our capacity to make effective treatments more readily available in a broad range of community settings, and provide further insight into how treatments may be modified to address predictors of attenuated response. Collectively our goals remain focused on generating answers to the age-old question of which patients are likely to respond to which treatments in which settings? Dr. John Piacentini, an internationally recognized expert in CBT treatment development and outcomes evaluation who has conducted multiple randomized trials of single and multi-modal treatments, will serve as the symposium discussant. He will discuss the trials presented herein which, notably, contain sample sizes that support the use of advanced statistical methods that enhance our capacity to become more precise with our predictions, which in turn will advance better treatment matching up front as well as improvements in clinical service provision. Dr. Piacentini will present his perspective on these recent methodological advances in the study of treatment predictors, moderators, and mediators, and offer suggestions regarding how best to overcome the continuing dearth of empirically supported mental health services in many if not most community settings.

Learning Objectives:

At the end of this session, the learner will be able to:
  1. Recount evidence of an SRI dose-response curve in combined treatment for pediatric OCD, and describe predictors and moderators of outcome.
  2. Recount whether telehealth interventions are effective for youth with anxiety disorders, and discuss moderators and predictors of response.
  3. Describe two methods by which investigators sought to disseminate exposure-based treatments for anxious youth in myriad community settings.
  4. Describe 3 methods by which experienced ERP providers report tailoring interventions to address Not Just Right/Incompleteness presentations.

Presentations:

  • 10:06 AM - 10:27 AM CST
    (SYM 33) Multimodal Treatment Response in Pediatric OCD: effectiveness, Predictors, and Moderators

    Speaker: Martin E. Franklin, Ph.D. – Rogers Behavioral Health

  • 10:27 AM - 10:48 AM CST
    (SYM 33) The Kids FACE FEARS Pragmatic Randomized Effectiveness Study of Therapist-led versus Guided Online Treatment for Pediatric Anxiety: Overview and Preliminary Outcomes

    Speaker: Jonathan Comer, Ph.D. (he/him/his) – Florida International University

    Co-author: Jonathan Comer, Ph.D. (he/him/his) – Florida International University

    Co-author: Donna Pincus, PhD – Boston University

    Co-author: Molly Adrian, Ph.D. (she/her/hers) – University of Washington

    Co-author: Jami M. Furr, Ph.D. – Florida International University

    Co-author: Dana McMakin, Ph.D. – Florida International University, Department of Psychology

    Co-author: Rheanna Platt, M.P.H., M.D. – Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine

    Co-author: Ronald Rapee, Ph.D. (he/him/his) – Maquarie University

    Co-author: Andrea Spencer, MD, MPH (she/her/hers) – Ann & Robert Lurie Children's Hopsital of Chicago/Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine

    Co-author: Michelle Porche, Ed.D. (she/her/hers) – UC Riverside School of Medicine

    Co-author: Lisa Fortuna, MD, MPH (she/her/hers) – UC Riverside School of Medicine

  • 10:48 AM - 11:09 AM CST
    (SYM 33) From Development to Implementation: Using a Team-based Service Model to Increase Access to Exposure Treatment in Pediatric Anxiety and OCD

    Speaker: Jennifer Herren, Ph.D. (she/her/hers) – Alpert Medical School of Brown University

    Co-author: Joshua Kemp, Ph.D. – Alpert Medical School of Brown University

    Co-author: Emma Jenkins, BA (she/her/hers) – Pediatric Anxiety Research Center, Brown University Health

    Co-author: Erin O'Connor, PhD (she/her/hers) – Alpert Medical School, Brown University

    Co-author: Sarah Morris, PhD (she/her/hers) – Alpert Medical School, Brown University

    Co-author: Kristen Benito, PhD (she/her/hers) – Alpert Medical School, Brown University

    Co-author: Jennifer Freeman, Ph.D. – Alpert Medical School of Brown University

  • 11:09 AM - 11:30 AM CST
    (SYM 33) Clinician Perspectives on Using Exposure to Treat Non-fear-based Presentations of Obsessive-compulsive Disorder

    Speaker: Rachel A. Schwartz, Ph.D. (she/her/hers) – Rogers Behavioral Health

    Co-author: Madeline Hartig, MS (she/her/hers) – Rogers Behavioral Health

    Co-author: Martin E. Franklin, Ph.D. – Rogers Behavioral Health