Short-term treatment for children with phobic and anxiety problems: A pragmatic view

In this article we present our "pragmatic orientation," which we have found useful in our work with children who suffer from anxiety disorders at the Child and Family Psychosocial Research Center at Florida International Univ ersity, Miami. This orientation is likely to be particularly useful to ment al health professionals who are providing front-line intervention to childr en with difficulties with anxiety and acute stress reactions, because we th ink it provides a useful intellectual frame for their intervention activiti es. In addition to describing our pragmatic orientation, we describe the ma in features of our psychosocial intervention, including a description of ou r "transfer of control" treatment approach. We follow our description of ou r transfer of control approach with a more detailed account of the treatmen t itself, and a summary of our findings from two of our recently completed controlled clinical trials studies. We conclude the article with a brief di scussion of future directions for clinical and research activities.