Anxiety Management Program for Adolescents with Attention-Deficit - Research Paper Example

Download file to see previous pages All the participants were diagnosed by pediatricians to be meeting the DSM-IV-TR criteria for ADHD (American Psychiatric Association, 2000). In addition to this, all the participants were diagnosed with comorbid anxiety disorder. Group 1 (n=4) baseline phase was conducted over 5 days and Group 2 (n=5) was done in 6 days. Group 2 began intervention after Group 1. The multiple baseline design which is very flexible consists of a coordinated series of simple phase changes at different points in time after a different first phase length, allowing specific between-series comparisons (Barlow, Hayes & Nelson, 1986).

The data was self-recorded by the participants using a self-monitoring anxiety thermometer scale specifically developed for this purpose. The data was recorded each day of the regular school week in four different contexts. These four contexts include: immediately prior to leaving home from school, immediately prior to leaving the classroom for recess, immediately prior to leaving the classroom to go home, and immediately prior to beginning homework. Cards with the anxiety thermometer scale were printed to show the four contexts, and the participants were instructed to indicate how anxious they felt in the context at that time on a scale of 1-10. Prior to this, the nine participants received a one-hour training session on how to use the self-recording protocol.

After completing the baseline phase, the Intervention (Anxiety Reduction Program) was introduced to each group at staggering times with the first receiver of the intervention decided randomly. The program was delivered by three clinical psychologists currently enrolled in a doctoral program. There was one assigned for each group. The third one acted as an observer in both groups to ensure the standardization of program delivery. The intervention phase ran for eight weeks with the nine participants still self-recording their anxiety levels in the four contexts. To avoid overburdening the participants with lengthy data collection, the participants were informed in advance regarding the days of the week that they were to self-record during the weekly intervention program sessions. ...Download file to see next pages Read More