Enhancing Youth Anxiety Treatment with Engaging Cohesion Assessment

This study found that youth age, early and late group cohesion, and early and late alliance all played important roles in predicting clinical severity and client treatment satisfaction at post-treatment. Specifically, higher clinical severity at pretreatment predicted lower early group cohesion, while higher youth age, higher clinical severity at pretreatment, and higher youth-rated early alliance predicted lower late group cohesion. On a positive note, higher therapist-rated early and late alliance predicted higher group cohesion at the corresponding stages. Furthermore, the study showed that higher late group cohesion was related to decreased clinical severity and increased client treatment satisfaction at post-treatment. Notably, early group cohesion did not predict any post-treatment variables.