Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions (SPACE)
North Coast Psychological Services now offers an evidence-based parent-focused treatment to address child and adolescent anxiety called SPACE (https://www.spacetreatment.net/). Dr. Eli Lebowitz from the Yale Child Study Center developed this program that teaches parents how to respond in a supportive manner when their child demonstrates anxiety and works towards change by reducing any accommodations that parents may do that interfere with their child learning how to manage their anxious thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
This group-based approach targets family behavioral change by working with parents to help them respond to their child's anxious thoughts and behaviors in a manner that is supportive, encouraging and non-accommodating to have children improve their self-regulation.
Some of the main anxiety problems treated with SPACE include Fears and Phobias, Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Panic Disorder and Agoraphobia, Selective Mutism, Separation Anxiety, and Social Anxiety. Research has supported the SPACE program in clinical work with parents of children who have anxiety-related behaviors.
For further information, please email Dr. Allison Cali ([email protected]) or Dr. Mark Terjesen ([email protected]) or call (516) 229-1975 ext 4
Lebowitz, E. R., Marin, C., Martino, A., Shimshoni, Y., & Silverman, W. K. (2020). Parent-based treatment as efficacious as cognitive-behavioral therapy for childhood anxiety: A randomized noninferiority study of supportive parenting for anxious childhood emotions. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 59(3), 362-372.
Lebowitz, E. R., Omer, H., Hermes, H., & Scahill, L. (2014). Parent training for childhood anxiety disorders: The SPACE program. Cognitive and behavioral practice, 21(4), 456-469.
