They did an open clinical trial in the University. “Our thinking was if we get kids practicing these skills that they’re learning in treatment on their phones every day, eventually even doing the exposures at home using the app, they could get better faster and more fully,” and shorten wait lists for therapists in the community, Silk said.Įarlier this year, Silk and a team published a paper showing that kids with anxiety who were successfully treated with CBT between ages 9 and 14 were less likely to have symptoms of depression-and fewer of them-years later.īased on these findings, the app was designed for kids in late elementary to early high school, though that range could be expanded in the future, Silk said. ![]() Silk and Bambang Parmanto, professor and chair of Health Information Management in the School of Health and Rehabilitation Sciences, wanted to address these challenges while at the same time democratizing access to CBT. These factors are the typical need for 12-16 weeks of therapy, which can be tricky for busy families and the lack of available, trained therapists in the community, which can lead to long wait lists and over-booked or unavailable clinicians. In addition to working to address the needs of the 40 percent of children who don’t improve, SmartCAT’s aims include mitigating two other factors that make standard CBT for anxiety challenging for some, Silk said. So to augment the traditional course of CBT, they developed SmartCAT. Studies have shown over the years that CBT is about 60 percent effective in treating anxiety-but that still leaves about 40 percent of kids that don’t get better, “kind of suggesting that some kids need a little bit more,” said Silk, who is also a licensed clinical child psychologist. “We find that actually doing these exposures and facing your fears is what’s most effective in helping children and teenagers, as well as adults, get over their anxiety,” said Jennifer Silk, professor of psychology at Pitt and the lead investigator behind SmartCAT. It works by having a therapist and patient work together on restructuring negative or intrusive thought patterns-first by identifying them, figuring out their triggers and then working up to actually changing the patient’s thinking through lived experiences or practicing exposures. It comes with an integrated clinician portal that allows patients to share their progress with their doctor.Ĭurrently, cognitive behavioral therapy, or CBT, is a respected standard treatment for all types of anxiety, including generalized, separation and social anxiety. ![]() SmartCAT, or, smartphone-enhanced child anxiety treatment, is a mobile health app designed to make treatment for anxiety disorders in children more effective and more efficient. Read more about the friendship and collaboration between Rogers and Margaret B. McFarland, Rogers' mentor and a child psychologist at Pitt, in PItt Med magazine. Rogers' basic theme of caring for children’s feelings,” Silk said. ![]() The SmartCAT project is just one example of how Pitt researchers and educators are representing the commitment to child development that Rogers espoused. ![]() Rogers' legacy: Commitment to child developmentĭecades ago, Fred Rogers went on TV and began helping children understand and tak about their feelings in a way that was unusual for its time.įor Pitt researchers Jennifer Silk and Bambang Parmanto, a desire to help today's kids resulted in a smartphone-enhanced child anxiety treatment-“a therapist in your pocket,” as Parmanto describes it.
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