Brief Report: Supporting Families in Intensive Treatment for Pediatric Anxiety and Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders

Pediatric anxiety rates have doubled during the COVID-19 pandemic (Racine et al., 2021), but access to care has not increased commensurately (Panchel et al., 2021). Intensive group- and family-based outpatient treatment that implements cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) with exposure and response prevention (ERP) for pediatric anxiety disorders and OCD is a treatment design that treats more children at one time and may facilitate treatment momentum with its intensive nature so that new patients can be treated sooner. This paper describes CBT-based interventions from an intensive treatment program for pediatric anxiety disorders and/or OCD that involves parents and that can be applied in relevant community-based settings with the hopes of increasing access to evidence-based care.