Addressing Parental Accommodation When Treating Anxiety In Children

by Eli R. Lebowitz

Overview

Changes that parents and other family members make to their own behaviors to help a child avoid or alleviate anxiety are known as accommodations. Parental accommodation is a key aspect of child anxiety, and has a major impact on course, severity of symptoms and impairment, family distress, and treatment outcomes. As such the careful, gradual removal of accommodation by parents and loved ones is an important target of anxiety treatment for children.

Addressing Parental Accommodation When Treating Anxiety in Children provides invaluable guidance to clinicians who wish to address accommodation within the context of a broader treatment strategy for anxious children, or as a stand-alone treatment. Clinicians will learn from this concise and easily accessible primer how to help parents identify and monitor accommodation, how to create treatment plans for reducing accommodation, and how to help parents communicate these plans to their children and implement them effectively. They will also learn how to help families cope with disruptive child responses to reduced accommodation, how to work with parents who struggle to cooperate, and what to do about a child's threats of self-harm. The book includes transcripts and rich clinical illustrations, as well as guidance on how to discuss accommodation with both parents and children-including a wealth of easily understood metaphors to aid in approaching the topic with empathy and without judgment. Addressing Parental Accommodation When Treating Anxiety in Children is an essential resource that will be of use to psychologists, counsellors, and clinical social workers who treat anxious children.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780190869984
Publisher:	Oxford University Press
Publication date:	08/15/2019
Series:	ABCT Clinical Practice Series
Pages:	184
Sales rank:	212,190
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 0.50(d)

About the Author

Eli R. Lebowitz, PhD, studies and treats childhood and adolescent anxiety at the Yale School of Medicine, Child Study Center, where he is director of the Program for Anxiety Disorders. His research focuses on the development, neurobiology, and treatment of anxiety and related disorders, with special emphasis on family dynamics and the role of parents in these disorders.

Table of Contents

Series Foreword
About the Author

SECTION 1 FAMILY ACCOMMODATION: HOW, WHAT, AND WHY
Chapter 1 Introduction to Accommodation of Child Anxiety
Chapter 2 Why Parents Accommodate

SECTION 2 THEORETICAL BASIS AND MECHANISMS OF ACTION
Chapter 3 Why Accommodation Matters - Negative Impact of Parent Accommodation
Chapter 4 Reducing Accommodation to Treat Child Anxiety

SECTION 3 DEALING WITH ACCOMMODATION IN CHILD ANXIETY TREATMENT
Chapter 5 Assessing Family Accommodation
Chapter 6 Addressing Accommodation
Chapter 7 Parental Support: An Alternative to Family Accommodation
Chapter 8 Planning How Parents Will Reduce Accommodation
Chapter 9 Obstacles to Addressing Accommodation

SECTION 4 CASE EXAMPLES: ADDRESSING FAMILY ACCOMMODATION WITHIN CHILD THERAPY
Chapter 10 Teenager with Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Chapter 11 Child with Separation Anxiety Disorder

SECTION 5 CASE EXAMPLES: ADDRESSING FAMILY ACCOMMODATION AS STAND-ALONE TREATMENT
Chapter 12 Teenager with Social Phobia
Chapter 13 Extreme Accommodation of a child with OCD and Coercive Behaviors

References
Appendix A
Appendix B
Index

Editorial Reviews

"For clinicians treating children who have anxiety, this trendsetting book offers guidelines, illustrative dialogues, and vignettes to support addressing parents' accommodation behaviors and children's anxiety interactively." — S.M. Valente, UCLA; Department of Veterans Affairs, CHOICE

"It's all about accommodation, and Lebowitz does an impressive job describing (a) accommodation and all its feature and (b) the application of strategies designed to reduce parent accommodation. Unburdened by excessive citations, yet rich with case descriptions, this well-informed and readable work recognizes that prior parent interventions for child anxiety were typically added-on to child treatment, rather than being an independent stand-alone approach. Lebowitz provides an excellent resource for those wanting to learn about changing parent accommodation to favorably impact child anxiety and OCD." — Philip C. Kendall, PhD, ABPP, Distinguished University Professor, Laura H. Carnell Professor of Psychology, Temple University

"Eli Lebowitz scores big with this innovative, highly readable, and practical guide for therapists who work with anxious children and their families. Unlike many standard child-focused treatments for anxious children, this approach is oriented towards working primarily with and through parents who inadvertently or otherwise accommodate the very fears and anxieties they wish to change in their children. This is not to say the parents cause the fear and anxiety; rather, and most importantly, it acknowledges the role that parents play in accommodating and perhaps maintaining these fears and anxieties. Here, Lebowitz presents us with a developmentally-sensitive, contextually-informed, and evidence-based approach which will help us address the weaknesses in our extant approaches. It is a volume whose time has surely come." — Thomas H. Ollendick, PhD , University Distinguished Professor, Director, Child Study Center, Virginia Tech

From the Publisher