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Symposia
Technology/Digital Health
Fanny A. Dietel, Ph.D. (she/her/hers)
Postdoctoral clinical research fellow
University of Osnabrueck, Germany
Osnabrueck, Niedersachsen, Germany
Isabel Brandhorst, PhD
Clinical Research Fellow
University Hospital Tuebingen, Germany
Tuebingen, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany
Katharina Allgaier, PhD
Clinical Research Fellow
University Hospital Tuebingen, Germany
Tuebingen, Baden-Wurttemberg, Germany
Lukasz Stasielowicz, PhD
Post-doctoral Research Fellow
University of Osnabrueck
Osnabrueck, Niedersachsen, Germany
Johanna Loechner, Prof. Dr.
Associate Professor
Friedrich-Alexander Universität Erlangen
Erlangen, Bayern, Germany
Obsessive-compulsive and related disorders (OCRD) typically emerge in childhood and adolescence and often follow a chronic, debilitating course if left untreated. Access to evidence-based treatment is frequently hindered by substantial barriers, including symptom-related shame and limited specialized infrastructure. Given these challenges, there is a critical unmet need for easily disseminable, low-threshold interventions, particularly for vulnerable subpopulations such as children and adolescents. In this regard, digital health interventions (DHI) offer key advantages over face-to-face treatment (e.g., accessibility, cost-efficiency, scalability) and hold promise for overcoming existing treatment barriers. However, despite their theoretical potential, empirical evidence on the efficacy of DHI for youth with OCRD remains limited.
The present meta-analysis examines the efficacy of DHI for OCRD in children and adolescents up to the age of 21 years, with a focus on identifying outcome predictors (e.g., sociodemographic and psychopathological characteristics, intervention modalities).
We conducted a meta-analysis of randomized-controlled trials up to 2023, including k = 137 studies on DHI across psychopathologies and k = 18 on DHI for OCRD. We are updating this meta-analysis to include studies until February 2024, with a total of k = 175. Data analysis is currently ongoing and will be completed by April 2024.
Preliminary findings from the previous meta-analysis (k = 18 studies, N = 1201) indicate that DHI yielded a small but significant effect on symptom reduction in youth with OCRD (g = 0.30, p < .001, 95% CI [0.16, 0.45]). Moderator analyses showed that DHI for OCRD were more effective than waitlist or active control conditions (g = 0.43, p < .001, 95% CI [0.29, 0.57]), while guided and unguided interventions demonstrated comparable efficacy. Further, digital cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) exhibited similar effectiveness to in-person CBT for OCRD (g = 0.02, p = .884, 95% CI [-0.20, 0.23]).
Overall, preliminary findings indicate small, yet clinically meaningful effects of DHI for youth with OCRD. Comparable efficacy between digitally delivered CBT and in-person CBT, as well as between guided and unguided DHI, suggests that DHI could serve as an accessible, scalable treatment option for digitally engaged youth. The updated meta-analysis will refine these insights by identifying key outcome predictors in a larger sample, thus informing optimization of DHI for standalone and blended-care applications.