2 - (SYM 42) Leveraging Digital Tools for Parent Involvement in Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Anxiety Disorders in Hispanic/latinx Children and Adolescents

Background and Significance

Anxiety disorders are prevalent and impairing disorders that result in negative outcomes if left untreated (e.g., suicide, poor educational attainment) (Kessler et al., 2005). Hispanic/Latinx (HL) children are especially at risk for negative outcomes given cumulative evidence that they experience higher levels of anxiety symptoms compared with their White, non-Latinx counterparts (WNL) (e.g., Varela & Hensely-Maloney, 2009).  Unfortunately, HL children and their families face tremendous mental health care disparities relating to barriers to care and stigmatization (Chavira et al., 2014).  Despite calls made to improve representation of minoritized communities in research, HL families continue to be underrepresented in anxiety research, including randomized controlled clinical trials (Peris et al., 2021; Pina & Silverman, 2003; Roberts et al., 2020) This impedes advancement of childhood anxiety treatments including treatments that emphasize parent involvement (Silverman et al., 2019; Silverman et al., 2022).

Present Study

We will begin by summarizing some of our previous CBT clinical trials data with HL children and their parents. These data will include early work suggesting treatment equivalence between HL and WNL families, followed by more recent data, which are the first to show the mediating role of parent behaviors linked to anxiety (e.g., psychological control; negative reinforcement) and the moderating role of acculturation. These data will set the stage for our ongoing work in leveraging digital tools for parent involvement in CBT for anxiety in HL youth. We will discuss how participatory action research methodology can be a powerful tool to improve minority representation in research. We also will demonstrate portions of a Child CBT + Digital Parent Intervention (CBT+DPI) for HL mothers of children ages 10 to 14 years and present preliminary data from our CBT+DPI open trial.