Effects of standard and modular psychotherapies in the treatment of youth with severe irritability.
Spencer C. Evans, John R. Weisz, Ana C. Carvalho, Patricia M. Garibaldi, Sarah Kate Bearman, Bruce F. Chorpita
Abstract
OBJECTIVE: To examine the preliminary effectiveness of a modular, transdiagnostic, behavioral/cognitive-behavioral intervention (MATCH) compared with standard manualized treatments (SMT) and usual care (UC) for treating youth with severe irritability. METHOD: s = 24-31 across conditions). Longitudinal multilevel models and ANOVAs were estimated to examine numerous clinical outcomes within and between conditions. RESULTS: ES = 0.60). Although SIMD youths in all conditions showed reductions in DSM diagnoses, only MATCH predicted significantly fewer posttreatment diagnoses than UC (averaging 1.0 fewer; ES = 0.93). Finally, among the entire sample, MATCH and SMT equivalently outperformed UC in reducing irritability (ES = 0.49) and the effects of each treatment condition on other outcomes were not moderated by baseline irritability. CONCLUSIONS: Extant behavioral/cognitive-behavioral psychotherapies-already well-established and widely used-may be helpful for treating youths with severe irritability. A transdiagnostic, modular format showed the most consistently favorable pattern of results across multiple outcomes, informants, and measurement schedules. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).