Child and adolescent anxiety disorders (ADs) contribute to impairment in social functioning and peer relationships, exacerbating anxiety and related difficulties. The extent to which the AD treatment with the strongest evidence-base, cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT), improves social functioning and peer relationships is unclear. In this article, we report results of the first systematic narrative review of this topic. Randomized clinical trials of CBT for child and/or adolescent ADs were included if they used at least one measure of social functioning or peer relationships as a treatment outcome. Sixteen studies met our inclusion criteria. From each study, we extracted the sample characteristics, treatment arms, social and/or peer outcome measures, and statistical findings. Results show that social functioning and/or peer relationships improved over time in the majority of studies, highlighting an important aspect of treatment efficacy beyond anxiety reduction. There were also several treatment-specific effects, but considerable variability across studies’ samples, methods, and findings, makes it difficult to draw firm conclusions about which specific treatments improve specific outcomes. We recommend next steps for research to reconcile these findings, including improved operationalization and standardization of social and peer outcomes, and research on treatment specificity and mechanisms.

儿童和青少年焦虑症 (AD) 会导致社交功能和同伴关系受损，加剧焦虑和相关困难。认知行为疗法 (CBT) 具有最强证据基础的 AD 治疗在多大程度上改善了社会功能和同伴关系尚不清楚。在本文中，我们报告了对该主题的第一次系统叙述性审查的结果。如果儿童和/或青少年 AD 至少使用一种社会功能或同伴关系衡量标准作为治疗结果，则纳入 CBT 随机临床试验。十六项研究符合我们的纳入标准。从每项研究中，我们提取了样本特征、治疗组、社会和/或同伴结果测量以及统计结果。结果表明，在大多数研究中，社会功能和/或同伴关系随着时间的推移而得到改善，这突显了治疗效果除了减少焦虑之外的一个重要方面。还有几种特定治疗效果，但研究样本、方法和结果之间存在相当大的差异，因此很难就哪些特定治疗改善特定结果得出明确的结论。我们建议下一步研究协调这些发现，包括改进社会和同伴结果的操作化和标准化，以及治疗特异性和机制的研究。