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Can schools prevent childhood anxiety with parent-led CBT? - Mind the Kids podcast

In this episode of Mind the Kids, the podcast from the Association for Child and Adolescent Mental Health (ACAMH), host Clara Faria, academic clinical fellow in child psychiatry, is joined by Dr. Tessa Reardon, research fellow in the departments of experimental psychology and psychiatry at the University of Oxford. Dr. Reardon shares findings from her recently published paper in JCPP, the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, co-authored with colleagues. Drawing on the My Cats cluster randomised controlled trial, the study recruited children aged four to seven identified as being at heightened risk for anxiety disorders through schools across England. The intervention — known as OSI (Online Support and Intervention for Child Anxiety) — is a parent-led, therapist-supported online cognitive behavioural therapy programme, in which parents work through digital modules of approximately 20 minutes each, supported by brief telephone or video calls with a children's wellbeing practitioner, amounting to around two and a half hours of contact time in total. The research sits against a backdrop of a growing gap between the need for child mental health support and access to evidence-based care. CAMHS thresholds are high, and many families cannot access help until difficulties are already entrenched — yet anxiety disorders in children can onset as early as age five and a half. Schools offer a distinctive opportunity to reach families before problems escalate, and England's Mental Health Support Teams (MHSTs) represent a trained, scalable future workforce for delivering this type of early intervention in child mental health. The primary outcome — anxiety disorder diagnosis at 12 months — showed fewer diagnoses in the intervention group, though the difference did not reach statistical significance. All secondary outcomes were statistically significant, however, including reductions in child anxiety symptoms, inhibited temperament, parental anxiety, and targeted child and parent behaviours. Approximately three quarters of families completed the programme — a notably strong completion rate for a school-recruited, at-risk population who were not actively help-seeking. Qualitative findings, forthcoming, point to broader ripple effects within families beyond the targeted outcomes. Clara and Tessa discuss why schools were chosen as the recruitment setting; why the integrated practitioner calls in therapist-supported online CBT appear central to completion rates compared with fully self-guided approaches; and what the findings mean for scaling school-based mental health intervention. The conversation also turns to a key challenge ahead — addressing inequalities in participation, particularly among families from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds, to ensure the benefits of parent-led CBT reach those who need them most. A must-listen for anyone working in child anxiety prevention, early intervention, school-based mental health, CBT for young children, CAMHS, or child and adolescent mental health. Read the JCPP paper 'Parent-led CBT delivered via online and telephone support alongside usual school practice versus usual school practice only for young children identified as at risk for anxiety disorders through screening in schools: a cluster randomised controlled trial' Tessa Reardon, Obioha C. Ukoumunne, Helen Dodd, Gemma Halliday, Claire Hill, Bec Jasper, Benjamin Jones, Peter J. Lawrence, Fran Morgan, Anna Placzek, Ronald M. Rapee, Mara Violato, Shuye Yu, MYCATS Team, Cathy Creswell First published: 19 February 2026 https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.70119 Get a free CPD/CME certificate for listening to this podcast by registering for a FREE ACAMH Learn account at https://bit.ly/4fF4BBW Visit https://www.acamh.org Facebook and LinkedIn search / ACAMH Instagram https://www.instagram.com/assoc.camh Bluesky https://bsky.app/profile/acamh.bsky.social X https://x.com/acamh

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The oversimplification of ADHD - and what we should do next

ADHD is misunderstood and mischaracterised, and that’s creating significant challenges for those with the condition as well as those trying to support them, argues Professor Gaia Scerif

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Remembering what you did: Episodic memory for self-actions

Episodic memory stores not only passively experienced events, but also one’s own past actions and decisions. Despite their critical role for learning …

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Reconceptualizing cognitive-behavioral processes in youth anxiety in the digital age - Nature Mental Health

This Perspective considers the impact of social anxiety disorder on adolescents within digital environments, proposing a revised framework that incorporates computer-mediated communication’s effects o...

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Professor Asifa Majid awarded Humboldt Research

Professor Asifa Majid of the Department of Experimental Psychology has been awarded the prestigious Humboldt Research Award by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

medsci.ox.ac.uk

Mismatching Expressions: Spatiotemporal and Kinematic Differences in Autistic and Non‐Autistic Facial Expressions

Preliminary studies suggest there are differences in the facial expressions produced by autistic and non-autistic individuals. However, it is unclear what specifically is different, whether such diff...

doi.org

Active disambiguation guides inferring controllability and cause in social interactions - Nature Communications

In social settings, people need to establish how much they contribute to shared outcomes. Here, the authors show that people strategically alter their actions to establish their level of control and i...

nature.com

Sir Paul Nurse officially opens the Life and Mind building

The Life and Mind building, a £200 million world-class teaching and research facility, has been officially opened by Sir Paul Nurse, Principal Group Leader, The Francis Crick Institute, President Elect of the Royal Society, and 2001 Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine.

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JCPP Advances | ACAMH Child Development Journal | Wiley Online Library

This study found that parent internalising symptoms predicted internalising symptoms in younger children, with no evidence of child-driven effects. Among adolescents, mental health symptoms showed bi...

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