Anxiety-related difficulties in goal-directed behavior predict worse treatment outcome among adolescents treated for suicidal ideation and depressive symptoms.

Abstract

Although treatments for youth at risk for suicide have been successful, they are not similarly effective for everyone. Anxiety may interfere with adolescents' ability to engage with therapy and explain why some adolescents do not respond as well as others to treatment. The current study tested whether an anxiety diagnosis predicted treatment outcome among a sample of adolescents with suicidal ideation and depressive symptoms participating in either attachment-based family therapy or family-enhanced nondirective supportive therapy (N = 129; M age = 14.87, SD = 1.68; 81.9% female). The data set that the current study used had a high representation of Black/African American adolescents (48.8% of sample), which is valuable, as few studies have included adequate representation of this population. A significant indirect effect (.88; 95% confidence interval [.01, 2.64]) showed that across both treatment conditions, participants who met criteria for an anxiety disorder had greater difficulties engaging in goal-directed behavior midtreatment, and these difficulties, in turn, predicted more posttreatment suicidal ideation. The effect of anxiety on treatment outcome via difficulties with goal-directed behavior was nonspecific to the treatment condition. However, attachment-based family therapy was superior to family-enhanced nondirective supportive therapy in improving this aspect of emotion regulation among adolescents who did not have anxiety. In addition, difficulties with goal-directed behavior on treatment outcome were worse for adolescents' who reported greater attachment avoidance to their parents. Future research should test whether targeting goal-directed behavior and attachment avoidance would result in better treatment outcome for adolescents with suicidal ideation and anxiety. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).