ABSTRACT

Because most school-based CBT has been done in groups, these two topics fit well together in the same chapter. Several research groups have studied group-based child CBT. Overall, group-based CBT in children has been shown to be efficacious for depression (Clarke, Rohde, Lewinsohn, Hops, & Seeley, 1999; Rohde, Clarke, Lewinsohn, Seeley, & Kaufman, 2001), anxiety disorders (Barrett, 1998; Manassis, Mendlowitz, Scapillato, Avery, Fiksenbaum, Freire, Monga, & Owens, 2002; Mendlowitz, Manassis, Bradley, Scapillato, Miezitis, & Shaw, 1999; Silverman, Kurtines, Ginsburg, Weems, Lumpkin, & Carmichael, 1999), and obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) (Martin & Thienemann, 2005; Thienemann, Martin, Cregger, Thompson, & DyerFriedman, 2001). It may also help prevent depression in adolescents at risk due to parental depression (Clarke, Hornbrook, Lynch, Polen, Gale, Beardslee, O’Connor, & Seeley, 2001) and prevent relapse in children and adolescents with OCD (Asbahr, Castillo, Ito, Latorre, Moreira, & Lotufo-Neto, 2005). One criticism of these studies has been that most comparisons are with waitlist or minimal intervention conditions, raising the possibility of change being due to nonspecific factors unrelated to CBT. Muris, Meesters, and van Melick (2002), however, were able to demonstrate superiority of group CBT for childhood

anxiety in comparison to a psychological placebo condition that controlled for therapeutic contact time. Some school-based studies have also done comparisons with placebo interventions (see below).