Efficacy and effectiveness of school-based prevention and early intervention programs for anxiety
Section snippets
Effectiveness of school-based prevention and early intervention programs for anxiety
Anxiety is one of the most common psychological disorders in school aged children and adolescents. Current prevalence rates range from 4% to 25%, with an average rate of 8% (Boyd et al., 2000, Cole et al., 1998, Tomb and Hunter, 2004). The actual rate of prevalence, however, may be even higher, with many children and adolescents remaining unidentified and untreated.
The effects of anxiety disorders on the well-being of children and adolescents are substantial, with the child's social, emotional,
Search and screening procedures
The Cochrane Library, PsycInfo and PubMed databases were electronically searched, for articles published between 1987 and February 2008, with the key search terms “school⁎ OR school-based OR adolescen⁎ OR child⁎ OR youth”, “prevent⁎ OR early intervent⁎”, and “anxiety OR anxious”. The titles and abstracts of the 5725 articles initially identified by these searches were screened by the primary author to determine their relevance to the review. Completely irrelevant articles that were unrelated to
Results
Overall, 27 randomized controlled trials were identified in the review, describing 20 individual school-based prevention and early intervention programs for anxiety. Table 1, Table 2, Table 3 present the efficacy and effectiveness data for the universal, indicated and selective programs identified respectively, as well as the quality ratings and program details for each trial.
Program evaluation outcomes
Overall the results of this review support the value of prevention interventions for anxiety, with over three-quarters of the trials reporting a significant reduction in symptoms of anxiety. Small (0.11) to large (1.37) effect sizes were reported both at post-test and follow-up. The sizes of effects were quite variable, with possible explanations for the variability unclear, although differences in program fidelity, leader rapport, relevant content and audience appeal are possible explanations.
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