Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions (SPACE)

SPACE is a parent-based treatment program for children and adolescents with a range of anxiety disorders, OCD, and other related conditions and aims to treat children and adolescents by working directly with their parents.  Although children do not typically attend SPACE sessions – they are still the patients!  Parents (and other caregivers) are able to help their anxious children tremendously simply by shifting their own behavior, responding more supportively to their anxious child, and reducing the accommodations they have been making to their child symptoms.

Developed by Dr. Eli Lebowitz at the Yale Child Study Center, when SPACE treatment is successful, children feel less anxious and function better following treatment. Clinical trials have shown SPACE to be very effective in young children as well as dependent young adults (18+) including those who are still living at home, have withdrawn from school, or are unemployed.