Children and adolescents with obsessive-compulsive disorder responded equally well to daily and weekly cognitive-behavioral therapy, Eric A. Storch, Ph.D., and his colleagues at the University of Florida, Gainesville, have reported.
To compare the effectiveness of intensive cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) with less frequent treatments in terms of reducing obsessive-compulsive symptoms, the researchers randomized 40 children aged 7–17 years who met the diagnostic criteria for obsessive-compulsive disorder to receive intensive (daily) sessions of CBT or weekly sessions, which are a current standard of care (J. Am. Acad. Child Adolesc. Psychiatry 2007;46:469–78).
Dr. Storch and his colleagues assessed the children at baseline, after 14 sessions of daily or weekly therapy, and at a 3-month follow-up visit.
Symptoms were compared using the Children's Yale-Brown Obsessive-Compulsive Scale (CY-BOCS), which is a clinician-rated measure of obsessive-compulsive disorder severity.
Overall, children in both daily and weekly groups showed improvements on the CY-BOS scores, with posttreatment effect sizes of 2.62 and 1.73 respectively at the 3-month follow-up visit.
The findings suggest that additional care, perhaps in the form of weekly visits or phone calls, might be needed to sustain the benefits of intensive CBT over time. Both approaches eventually yield the same result, but a short program of intensive therapy might speed up a patient's progress, the researchers wrote.