Children and Teens

OCD and Anxiety in Children and Teens

Our treatment process for children and adolescents emphasises collaboration with parents, tailored to each child’s developmental stage.

When working with children and adolescents, we engage in child only, parent only and full family sessions. We maintain close communication with parents, providing feedback and progress, but also respect boundaries with the child and teen. Our approach is tailored to meet each young person's unique presentation and developmental needs.

It is important that we create a safe and fun environment for each child, and when working on OCD and anxiety we get creative! At SO Psychology, we use Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) for treatment of OCD. This is considered to be the gold standard form of treatment for all ages, from children through to adults. For anxiety presentations, we might also use exposure treatment, or we bring in some 'helpers' for a child to manage their anxiety symptoms, which might look like mindfulness, breathing exercise and relaxation exercises to name just a few.

My aim when working with children and teens with OCD and anxiety is to help them understand how OCD and anxiety works, creating and engaging in ERP tasks together. In my experience, treatment becomes so much more effective and meaningful as they progress on the journey and they begin to create some of their own exposure tasks. Not only does this help in reducing the impact of the OCD and anxiety, but also really sets up the young person for life in having a strong understanding of how to manage OCD and anxiety!

SPACE Approach

What is SPACE?

SPACE stands for Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions. This is a parent-based treatment program for children and adolescents with anxiety, OCD, and related difficulties.

SPACE was developed in USA by Dr. Eli Lebowitz from the Yale University Child Study Centre. It has and has been tested and found to be effective in randomized controlled clinical trials. At SO Psychology, Shelley has completed training by Dr Eli Lebowitz and is a SPACE provider.

Who is SPACE for and who participates in treatment?

While SPACE treatment works on reducing symptoms of a child or teens anxiety and OCD symptoms, the program is actually parent based. So what does this mean?

Often children and adolescents with anxiety and OCD are reluctant or struggle with the idea about engaging in treatment. When this is the case, we can use the SPACE treatment program.

Children don't need to attend SPACE sessions, instead we focus on working alongside of parents and caregivers in understanding and making changes at home that can support (not reassure) the child/teen. When SPACE treatment is successful children feel less anxious and function better following treatment.

What happens in SPACE treatment?

Parents who participate in SPACE will learn skills and tools to help their child overcome anxiety, OCD or related problems.

The treatment focuses on changes that parents can make to their own behaviour, they do not need to make their child change.

We understand that as parents, it is incredibly difficult seeing our children in distress. Because of this, we want to try and take that away for them. This often results in us engaging in behaviours that might (unintentionally) be making the anxiety, OCD and distress worse. If we think about an example it might look like - child distressed about going to bed at night, parent then starts leaving light on, checking under beds / closets etc, reassuring child, sleeping in with child. It can happen slowly and then you realise how much time is taken up each day engaged in the anxiety.

In SPACE treatment, we focus on two behaviours with the parents:

* how to respond supportively to the child

* how to reduce any accommodations in response to the child's distress

To learn more about SPACE and how it works contact Shelley for a confidential discussion.

You can also read more about SPACE here.