A total of 30 high-anxious children, ages 9-12 years, were assigned to either a CBT group (n=10), a psychological placebo intervention (emotional disclosure) (n=10), or a no-treatment control condition (n=10). The treatment consisted of the Coping Koala CBT program, which is the Australian adaptation of Kendall's Coping Cat program. The program consists of 12 sessions of about 30 minutes. They focus on recognizing anxious feelings and somatic reactions to anxiety, cognitive restructuring in anxiety-provoking situations, coping self-talk, exposure to feared stimuli, evaluating performance, and administering self-reinforcement. Children's levels of anxiety symptoms were measured with the Revised Children's Anxiety and Depression Scale and the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children. This was done on three occasions: during the initial screening, 1 week before treatment, and 1 week after treatment. In the no-treatment control condition, questionnaires were administered as a test-retest assessment; this occurred in the weeks that children in the intervention conditions completed pretreatment and posttreatment measures. Findings show that levels of psychopathological symptoms remained relatively stable during the 3 months preceding treatment. Most importantly, pretreatment-posttreatment comparisons indicate that CBT was superior to emotional disclosure and the no-treatment control condition. Only in the CBT condition did significant reductions of anxiety disorders symptoms, trait anxiety, and depression occur. 1 table and 38 references