Have Phobias, Will Travel: Addressing One Barrier to the Delivery of an Evidence-Based Treatment

Although a host of evidence-based treatments exist for youth with anxiety disorders, less than 30% of youth and their families receive these treatments. One of the main barriers to receiving these treatments is the lack of access to care, due largely to the absence of mental health professionals who have expertise in the delivery of these treatments in certain geographic locales. The current study examined whether a brief intensive treatment for specific phobias (SPs), Augmented One-Session Treatment (OST-A), would result in comparable treatment gains for families who traveled a considerable distance to receive this treatment when compared to families who resided in our local community. Participants included 76 youth with a clinically confirmed diagnosis of SP (38 local families and an age- and sex-matched sample of 38 nonlocal families). Although SP severity at pretreatment was significantly greater for the nonlocal youth than the local youth, both nonlocal and local youth showed commensurate improvement and maintenance of treatment gains over a 6-month period across several clinical outcome measures. Findings from this study show that OST-A is effective when families choose to travel for treatment, addressing at least one of the barriers to use of this evidence-based treatment.