A NOVEL TELEMEDICINE APPLICATION OF THE SPACE PARENT-BASED TREATMENT 1 Tele-SPACE: Group Parent-Based Treatment for Pediatric Anxiety via Telemedicine in a Public Health Clinic

Naama De La Fontaine^1,2*Tal Cohen^1,3Nimrod Hertz-Palmor⁴Noa Rubin¹Shirel Dorman-Ilan^1,5Gal Itav⁶Shlomit Tzafrir^1,6Hana Weisman¹Doron Gothelf^1,6,7Eli R Lebowitz²

• ¹The Edmond and Lily Safra Children's Hospital, Sheba Medical Center, Ramat Gan, Israel
• ²Child Study Center, School of Medicine, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, United States
• ³School of Psychology, The Gershon Gordon Faculty of Social Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv, Israel
• ⁴MRC Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit, School of Clinical Medicine, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, England, United Kingdom
• ⁵Baruch Ivcher School of Psychology, Reichman University, Herzliya, Israel
• ⁶Faculty of Medical & Health Sciences, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Tel Aviv, Israel
• ⁷Sagol School of Neuroscience, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel

Introduction: Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions (SPACE) is an evidencebased treatment for parents of children with anxiety disorders and/or obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Given the many barriers to accessing such evidence-based treatments, we evaluated for the first time the application of group-based SPACE, delivered to parents via telemedicine within a public health outpatient setting. Methods: In this single arm retrospective analysis of routine-care data participants, recruited from a hospital-based anxiety clinic, were mothers (N=50) of fifty children, ages 6.7-18.0 years (mean 11.2 ± 3.1), diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and/or OCD. Parent and child self-report measures assessed the impact of treatment on child anxiety symptoms, parental accommodation, parental anxiety and depression.Treatment feasibility, acceptability and satisfaction were assessed. Results: Post treatment, significant reductions were evident in child self-reported separation anxiety symptoms (p =0.008), mother-reported child anxiety symptoms (p=0.002), maternal accommodation (p=0.006), anxiety (p=0.004) and depressive symptoms (p=0.011). Treatment proved feasible, with completion rates of 77.3%, and participants reported high levels of satisfaction with the telemedicine format. Discussion: This is the first study of group-based SPACE over telemedicine. Results support the utility of this modality for overcoming treatment barriers in public health settings with highly heterogenous populations.