Emotional Awareness and Therapy Outcomes

Cognitive-behavioural therapy (CBT) improves anxiety in 60% of children. Anxiety disorders affect approximately 10-20 % of youth. Youth with anxiety have a higher risk of comorbid diagnoses, and just over a third are not treated. This makes examining factors that may lead to positive results from a specific treatment, a priority. A factor worth considering is emotional awareness, which refers to the skill of determining and understanding the origins and results of emotions.

Although links exist between childhood anxiety and emotional awareness, evaluation of whether emotional awareness can predict treatment outcomes for children with anxiety, is not present in the literature. Children with weak emotional awareness may have a hindered ability to effectively cope with negative emotions, and thus not profit from therapy. This study hypothesizes that individuals with greater levels of emotional awareness prior to treatment initiation, will have greater improvements in experienced anxiety, including a better ability to regulate their symptoms and improve functioning.

Thirty-seven youths aged seven to fifteen were treated for several forms of anxiety, including generalized anxiety disorder, social phobia, and separation anxiety disorder. Treatments included individual cognitive-behavioural therapy or family cognitive-behavioural therapy. These diagnoses were done through independent evaluators using semi-structured interviews. Anxiety levels of children were self-reported through questionnaires including the emotion expressivity scale and multidimensional anxiety scale for kids. These were completed before and after treatment. It was found that youth with greater levels of emotional awareness prior to treatment, showed greater benefits from treatment compared to those with lower levels. The difference was particularly found in the skill of coping with worry.

The results of this study indicate that greater emotional awareness leads to improved therapeutic outcomes for youth experiencing anxiety. This study is important in demonstrating that knowing the causes and effects of experienced emotions, especially those linked to worry,(for individuals experiencing anxiety) is helpful for treatment. Providing evidence for the aforementioned hypothesis, suggests that future research can focus on developing strategies for increasing emotional awareness in youth experiencing anxiety as the first step in therapy.

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Source:

• Davis, J. P., Kendall, P. C., & Suveg, C. M. (2019). Emotional awareness predicts specific cognitive-behavioural therapy outcomes for anxious youth. Child Psychiatry and Human Development, 50(4), 557-565. doi:http://dx.doi.org.myaccess.library.utoronto.ca/10.1007/s10578-018-00863-4