What is SPACE?

SPACE stands for Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions and is a parent-based treatment program for children and adolescents with anxiety, OCD, and related problems.

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.

Who is SPACE for? Who is the patient?

SPACE aims to treat children and adolescents with anxiety disorders and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Although children do not have to attend SPACE sessions – they are the patients. When SPACE treatment is successful, children feel less anxious and function better following treatment.

Some of the main anxiety problems treated with SPACE include:

• Separation anxiety
• Social anxiety
• Generalized anxiety
• Fears and phobias
• Panic disorder and Agoraphobia
• Selective mutism
• Obsessive-compulsive disorder
• School refusal

Who participates in treatment?

Parents (and other caregivers) participate in SPACE treatment sessions. In most cases the child or adolescent does not need to attend the treatment sessions.

What happens in SPACE treatment?

Parents who participate in SPACE will learn skills and tools to help their child overcome anxiety, OCD or related problems.

The treatment focuses on changes that parents can make to their own behavior; they do not need to make their child change.

The two main changes that parents learn to make in SPACE treatment are to respond more supportively to their anxious child and to reduce the accommodations they have been making to the child symptoms.

In 2020, I trained with Dr. Eli Lebowitz, the founder of SPACE, and am very excited to bring this program to my practice. If you would like to learn more about SPACE, please contact me for a free 20-minute phone consultation.

To read more about SPACE and how it works visit the visit the SPACE Resources page

SPACE in the news:

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/05/childhood-in-an-anxious-age/609079/

https://www.wmcactionnews5.com/2020/10/02/best-life-helping-kids-with-anxiety/

https://www.vice.com/en/article/4agzvm/giving-parents-therapy-can-help-their-anxious-children