Transdiagnostic correlates of family accommodation in anxious youth.

Abstract

Anxiety disorders are common in children and cause significant impairment. Family accommodation (FA), which refers to behavioral changes that family members make to temporarily alleviate a child's anxiety, has been linked to child anxiety symptom severity. Although emotional vulnerabilities for anxiety such as emotion dysregulation, anxiety sensitivity, and distress intolerance have been associated with family accommodation, research concerning the relationship between these constructs among anxious youth is limited. We hypothesized that these variables would be uniquely and positively associated with family accommodation and would moderate the relationship between anxiety symptom severity and family accommodation. Treatment-seeking child-parent dyads (N = 90; M_age = 10.17 years, SD = 2.71) completed measures assessing child emotion dysregulation, child anxiety sensitivity, child distress tolerance, and family accommodation; clinicians assessed child anxiety symptom severity. When controlling for child age, gender, and anxiety symptom severity in both models, emotion dysregulation was significantly and uniquely associated with parent-rated family accommodation. Distress tolerance significantly moderated the association between anxiety symptom severity and family accommodation, such that this association was stronger when distress tolerance was lower. Interventions targeting children's distress tolerance skills may help reduce family accommodation among families of children with high levels of anxiety. Additionally, targeting family accommodation in interventions for anxious children with low distress tolerance may help decrease child anxiety rates. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2025 APA, all rights reserved).