Group Based Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Anxiety in Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder: A Randomised Controlled Trial in a General Child Psychiatric Hospital Setting.

Subramaniam et al. (2023) ran a hospital trial of group CBT for anxious autistic kids. They compared the group program to usual care in a general child psychiatry unit.

Kids were aged 8-14 with autism and clinical anxiety. Therapists used an autism-friendly CBT manual in small groups once a week.

The main anxiety diagnosis score did not beat usual care. Yet parents and kids reported smaller but real anxiety drops on secondary checklists.

Families said they liked the groups and would join again. The gains were modest but clinically useful.

Reaven et al. (2024) extends these results into schools. They trained teachers to run the same CBT protocol and saw bigger anxiety reductions than usual care. The difference: school staff delivered it, showing the manual works outside hospitals.

Cox et al. (2015), an earlier follow-up, found large anxiety drops that partly faded after one year. That study had no control group, so the 2023 RCT gives a stricter test and finds smaller gains, suggesting earlier numbers may have been inflated.

Flygare et al. (2020) adapted CBT for autistic adults with OCD and saw large clinician-rated drops, yet only one in six reached remission. Together these papers show adapted CBT is doable across ages and targets, but responder rates stay modest.

You can pitch group CBT to families as a low-cost option that eases day-to-day anxiety even if it does not erase the diagnosis. Use the same autism tweaks: visual schedules, role-play, parent handouts. If you work in a school, copy Judy et al. and train staff; the manual travels well. Track both child and parent mood, because Bassett-Gunter et al. (2017) show parent stress drops too. Plan booster sessions a year out, since gains can slip.