Effectiveness of Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy in the Treatment of Children Suffering from Generalized Anxiety Disorder

In the recent years, more light has been shed onto the causes, nature and treatment of childhood anxiety by clinical psychologists. The research purpose is to assess the effectiveness of cognitive-behavioral therapy in the treatment of symptoms, alteration of maladaptive schemas of worry, and improvement of social functioning amongst the children suffering from generalized anxiety disorder. The research employed a semiexperimental method with pretest, posttest and control group. Therefore, 32 female children diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder were selected through convenience sampling and assigned to the experimental and control groups. All the individuals were tested with regard to the symptoms of the disorder, maladaptive schemas and social functioning prior to and subsequent to the treatment. The experimental group received eighteen 90-minute sessions of cognitive-behavioral therapy and the control group didn’t receive any treatment. One-way variance analysis indicated that cognitive-behavioral therapy is effective in decreasing worry, alteration of maladaptive schemas and improving the family relationship. Overall, cognitive-behavioral therapy can decrease worry and increase the perception of emotion control among the children suffering from generalized anxiety disorder.