Anxious kids need therapy and drugs

Kids with anxiety need all the help they can get. That's the verdict from a new study: Children and adolescents with "disabling" anxiety are most likely to recover if they get not only an antidepressant but also cognitive-behavioral talk therapy.

In the largest study to date of anxiety disorders among kids--it tracked nearly 500 patients--some 80 percent of patients who got the combination of drugs and talk improved significantly. Less than 60 percent reported the same level of improvement if they received either drugs alone or talk therapy alone.

This is valuable info for treatment providers, because up to half of children and adolescents with anxiety don't improve much. And it could lead to more faith in antidepressant treatment for these kids, rather than reliance on talk therapy alone because of safety concerns; this government-funded research reported no increase in serious side effects from Zoloft, which was the antidepressant used in the study.

- read the New York Times article

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