Trauma-focused cognitive-behavioral therapy for children: sustained impact of treatment 6 and 12 months later

This study presents the findings from 6- and 12-month follow-up assessments of 158 children ages 4-11 years who had experienced sexual abuse and who had been treated with Trauma-Focused Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (TF-CBT) with or without the inclusion of the trauma narrative (TN) treatment module and in 8 or 16 treatment sessions. Follow-up results indicated that the overall significant improvements across 14 outcome measures that had been reported at posttreatment were sustained 6 and 12 months after treatment and on two of these measures (child self-reported anxiety and parental emotional distress) there were additional improvements at the 12-month follow-up. Higher levels of child internalizing and depressive symptoms at pretreatment were predictive of the small minority of children who continued to meet full criteria for posttraumatic stress disorder at the 12-month follow-up. These results are discussed in the context of the extant TF-CBT treatment literature.