SPACE
Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions
SPACE is a parent-based treatment program for children and adolescents with anxiety, OCD and related problems.
SPACE aims to treat children and adolescents with anxiety disorders.
Although children do not have to attend SPACE sessions, they are the clients!
When SPACE treatment is successful, children feel less anxious and function better.
SPACE treatment is appropriate for many of the most common anxiety issues that children and adolescents face:
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Separation anxiety
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Social anxiety
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Generalized anxiety
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Fears and phobias
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Illness and health anxiety
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Selective mutism
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Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)
Is SPACE right for you?
While we work with families individually, we also offer a group-based parenting workshop that runs multiple times yearly.
While we cover all of the important components of SPACE, this workshop is designed to be educational and is not considered therapy as we do not conduct a clinical assessment of your child, provide diagnoses, or make individualized or personalized plan/treatment recommendations.
What is SPACE, and WHO is it for?
Developed by Dr. Eli Lebowitz, director of the Program for Anxiety Disorders of the Yale Child Study Center, SPACE is an innovative, evidence-based program to help treat children with anxiety.
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 children overcome anxiety, OCD, or related problems. The treatment focuses on changes parents can make to their own behaviour; they do not need to change their child. 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's symptoms.
