Remote Intensive Group Behavioral Treatment for Families of Children with Selective Mutism

ABSTRACT

Selective mutism (SM) is a relatively rare, but highly interfering, child anxiety disorder characterized by a consistent failure to speak in certain situations, despite demonstrating fluent speech in other contexts. Exposure-based cognitive behavioral therapy and Parent-Child Interaction Therapy adapted for SM can be effective, but the broad availability and accessibility of such specialty care options remains limited. Stay-at-home guidelines to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 further limited the accessibility of office-based specialty care for SM. Building on separate lines of research supporting intensive treatments and telehealth service delivery models, this paper is the first to describe the development, preliminary feasibility, acceptability, and efficacy of a Remote Intensive Group Behavioral Treatment (IGBT) for families of young children with SM (N=9). Treatment leveraged videoconferencing technology to deliver caregiver training sessions, lead-in sessions, 5 consecutive daily IGBT sessions, and an individualized caregiver coaching session. Remote IGBT was found to be both feasible and acceptable. All families (100%) completed diagnostic assessments and caregiver-report questionnaires at four major study timepoints (i.e., intake, pre-treatment, post-treatment, 4-month follow-up) and participated in all treatment components. Caregivers reported high treatment satisfaction at post-treatment and 4-month follow-up and low levels of burden associated with treatment participation at post-treatment. Approximately half of participating children were classified as treatment responders by independent evaluators at post-treatment and 4-month follow-up. Although these pilot results should be interpreted with caution, the present work underscores the potential utility of using videoconferencing to remotely deliver IGBT to families in their natural environments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Supplemental data

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/23794925.2022.2062688.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health under Grants F31MH122101 (PI: Hong); T32DA043449 (PI: Pelham); and F31HD104336 (PI: Heflin).