Exploring Treatment Response Predictors of a Parent-Led Therapist-Assisted Treatment for Childhood Trauma

Purpose: While stepped care trauma-focused cognitive behavioral therapy (SC-TF-CBT) is an effective service delivery model, understanding predictors of Step One, a parent-led therapist-assisted treatment, will help inform how to best match children at baseline to treatments. Method: Potential predictor variables were explored from 63 parent-child Step One participants with 43 responders and 20 non-responders. Baseline tailoring variables explored were anticipated critical life events, demographics, trauma-related variables, and child and parent outcomes. Results: Predictors of Step One non-response were parental depression, child anger outbursts and Hispanic/Latino parents even after controlling for child demographics, child post-traumatic stress, severity, and impairment. Conclusions: Parents with depression and children with high anger outbursts should consider starting with Step Two, therapist-led TF-CBT. Step One may benefit from including TF-CBT culturally modified strategies for Hispanic/Latino parents. If preference is to start with Step One, these parents and children should be closely monitored for treatment progress.