What is SPACE Treatment?
SPACE stands for Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions. SPACE aims to treat children and adolescents with anxiety disorders and OCD through a parent-focused approach. Parents (and other caregivers) participate in SPACE treatment sessions without their child present.
Anxiety-related problems treated through SPACE:
- Separation anxiety
- Social anxiety
- Generalized anxiety
- Specific phobias
- Panic disorder
- Agoraphobia
- Selective Mutism
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder
How does SPACE work?
SPACE was developed by Dr. Eli Lebowitz at the Yale Child Study Center and has been tested and found to be efficacious in randomized controlled clinical trials. Clinicians coach parents and caregivers on how to use specific skills and tools to help their child overcome anxiety, OCD or related problems. This takes place through changes parents make to how they respond to their child’s anxiety.
Parents learn ways to respond supportively to their anxious child and reduce the accommodations made around their child’s symptoms.
At Caring Cove, our first step is to identify the cause and function of your child’s anxiety so that we can determine the most effective treatment. We tailor our therapy approach to your child’s unique experience and needs, whether your child is experiencing generalized anxiety, social anxiety, specific phobias, school avoidance, separation anxiety, or a combination of similar challenges. Parents often have the option to either enroll their child in individual therapy to treat the anxiety or engage in parent sessions to target the anxiety. For parent-only sessions, clinicians work through a SPACE model and aim to equip you with more tools to support your child and reduce the impact of anxiety.
See our Anxiety Therapy page to learn more about the overlap between SPACE with child-based anxiety treatment.
Drs. Lindsay Anderson and Amanda Ferriola are both trained as SPACE providers. We invite you to call Caring Cove at 973-370-9944 for a free 15-minute consultation to assess if this might be the right approach for you.