Efficacy of a parent-based treatment for children and adolescents with obsessive-compulsive disorder: Protocol of a multiple baseline, single-case experimental design study.
SPACE parent training is being tested at home for tough OCD cases who did not improve with CBT.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Veeger et al. (2025) wrote a plan for a new study. They will test SPACE, a parent training program, for kids and teens with OCD who did not get better with regular CBT.
Seven families will join. Each family gets the same treatment, but they start at different times. This design is called a multiple baseline across participants.
Parents learn skills at home. No one knows yet if it will work. This paper only shows the plan, not results.
What they found
Nothing yet. This is a protocol paper. Real data will come later.
How this fits with other research
Rosqvist et al. (2002) tried home CBT for hard-to-treat OCD years ago. Three of four kids got a lot better. Veeger keeps the home setting but swaps CBT for SPACE parent training.
Sanberg et al. (2018) used the same multiple-baseline design for sleep problems in autism. Parents ran the plan at home and sleep improved. Veeger copies that design for OCD.
Kleinert et al. (2007) also used a multiple-baseline to teach parents DTT for autism. Parents learned fast and skills spread to new tasks. Veeger hopes SPACE will spread the same way.
Why it matters
If SPACE works, you gain a parent-led tool for OCD clients who stall in clinic CBT. You can train parents at home, skip child exposure sessions, and still target compulsions. Watch for the full results; if they are strong, add SPACE to your parent-training library.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Pediatric obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is a severely impairing disorder, associated with high levels of family accommodation (FA). Approximately 40 % of youth do not benefit from first-line treatment options (cognitive behavioral therapy or pharmacotherapy). Supportive Parenting for Anxious Childhood Emotions (SPACE) is a parent-based treatment, teaching parents to reduce FA and increase supportive parenting, thereby aiming to improve the child's OCD. This article presents the protocol of a multiple baseline single-case experimental design (SCED) study to test the efficacy of SPACE in reducing OCD severity and FA in youth with OCD. This SCED consists of a baseline, treatment, and follow-up phase. In total 25 youth (7–18 years) with OCD, who previously received cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) unsuccessfully, aborted treatment early, or were not able to receive CBT due to too high levels of OCD/anxiety, and their parents will be included. They will be randomly allocated to one of three baseline phase options (4, 6 or 8 weeks). The treatment phase consists of 12 weekly sessions of SPACE with parents. Throughout all phases, OCD severity and FA will be briefly assessed thrice a week. Standard clinical measurements assessing OCD severity and FA and secondary parameters will be conducted at six timepoints, till 6 months follow-up. Combining the innovative SPACE treatment with a SCED provides detailed insight into the relationship between OCD and FA over time. Studying this in clinical practice in complex cases that are normally understudied, helps to improve more personalized care for youth with OCD.
Contemporary Clinical Trials Communications, 2025 · doi:10.1016/j.conctc.2025.101456