Behaviourally-based Treatments 335just sitting and talking about feelings. Through reductions in problems and
increases in good times, whole relationships do change and this is very
important. The therapist shares the agenda with the family, rather than
making clever formulations hidden from them.
Outcome studies
There have been an enormous number (literally thousands) of well-
conducted single-case studies, and hundreds of randomised controlled
trials of behavioural treatments for children and adolescents. Bodily func-
tions such as eating, sleeping, wetting and soiling have been success-
fully tackled, with effect sizes of 0.7–1.5 standard deviations. Antisocial
behaviour in prepubertal children has repeatedly been shown to be im-
proved, with typical effect sizes of 0.4–0.8 SD. Hyperactivity is helped in
the short term for as long as the behavioural contingencies are applied, but
the changes are not usually long-lasting and the effect size is only around
0.2–0.4 SD. Emotional disorders such as school refusal and psychogenic
pain have responded, but usually with less dramatic improvements. How-
ever, some emotional disorders respond very well: cures of specific phobias
in just a few sessions are common, and cures or substantial improvements
in OCD occur in many cases after a course of about ten sessions of exposure
therapy with response prevention.
Subject review
Scott S. (2008) Parenting programs.In: Rutter Met al.(eds)Rutter’s
Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 5th edn. Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester,
pp. 1046–1061.
Scott S, Yule W. (2008) Behavioral therapies.In: Rutter Met al.(eds)
Rutter’s Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 5th edn. Wiley-Blackwell,
Chichester, pp. 1009–1025.
Further reading
Ball T, Bush A, Emerson F. (2004)Psychological Interventions for Severely
Challenging Behaviours Shown by People with Learning Disabilities. Leicester:
British Psychological Society.
Beidel Det al. (2000) Behavioral treatment of childhood social phobia.
Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology 68 : 1072–80.
Glazener CMA, Evans JHC, Peto RE. (2005) Alarm interventions for
nocturnal enuresis in children.Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews(1)
CD01567.