Technology-based interventions for anxiety disorders in youth: a meta-analysis

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Towson University Graduate Theses and Dissertations

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2019-06-17

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Towson University. Department of Psychology

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Abstract

Anxiety disorders are one of the most common disorders among children and adolescents (Beesdo, Knappe, & Pine, 2009), but often go untreated due to barriers such as time and cost (Salloum, Johnco, Lewin, McBride, & Storch 2016). Technology based Cognitive Behavioral Therapy treatments have been shown to be as effective at treating anxiety disorders as traditional interventions and can help to alleviate some of those barriers (Podina, Mogoase, David, Szentagotai, & Dobrean, 2016; Hedman et al., 2011; Ebert et al., 2015). Although there have been a few meta-analysis studies published regarding this topic, there is a need to explore technology-based interventions further. Past meta-analysis studies have not looked at the relationship between number of sessions and length of sessions to total efficacy, and past research has not looked at parental involvement as a potential moderator. The present metaanalysis sets out to investigate the overall efficacy of technology-based interventions, compare the efficacy of different technology-based interventions, investigate the relationship between number of sessions and length of sessions to total effect size, and look at parental involvement as a potential moderator. Overall, the results show that technology-based interventions are effective at decreasing anxiety symptoms (g = 0.71). Due to uneven group sizes, researchers were unable to compare the efficacy of the different technology groups. Pearson correlations found that there was not a significant interaction between number of sessions and length of sessions to total effect size (p = .594 and .058 respectively). Finally, results show that parental involvement is a moderator for total effect size, Z*diff = -1.07, p = .020. The results of this study seem to suggest that technology-based interventions are a good option for treatment, but limitations to this study do apply and further investigation into technology-based interventions should still be done.