The UP-C and UP-A are empirically-supported psychotherapies
UP-C and UP-A or, Emotion Detectives, as they are often called, are emotion-focused cognitive behavior therapies
The Unified Protocols for Transdiagnostic Treatment of Emotional Disorders in Children and Adolescents (UP-C/UP-A), or Emotion Detectives, were developed by Jill Ehrenreich-May, Ph.D. and colleagues. The UP-C and UP-A present the compelling idea that there may be a more efficient method of presenting effective strategies, such as those commonly used in cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) and third-wave behavior therapies, in order to simultaneously address an array of emotional disorder concerns in children and adolescents. The Unified Protocols frame treatment strategies in the general language of strong or intense emotions and promote change through a common lens that can be flexibly adapted across youth emotional disorders, including anxiety, depression, obsessive compulsive disorders and others, or combinations of these problem areas.
Specifically, the UP-C and UP-A help youth by allowing them to focus on a straightforward goal across emotional disorders: reducing intense negative emotion states by extinguishing the distress and anxiety these emotions produce through emotion-focused education, awareness techniques, cognitive strategies, problem-solving and an array of behavioral strategies, including a full-range of exposure and activation techniques.
here are some examples of UP-C and UP-A science
The UP-C (Emotion Detectives) outperforms control conditions for anxiety and depression in children.
Two randomized control trials conducted by Kennedy and colleagues (2019) and Caiado and colleagues (2024) demonstrated the effectiveness of the UP-C in reducing internalizing symptoms.
There are many applications of the UP-C/A for various presenting concerns.
There is emerging evidence for the effectiveness of the UP-C/A in treating primary irritability (Hawks et al., 2020), obsessive compulsive disorder (Shaw, Halliday, & Ehrenreich-May, 2021); post-traumatic stress disorder (Mohajerin et al., 2023), eating disorders (Thompson-Brenner et al., 2018), borderline features (Tonarely et al., 2021), misophonia (Lewin et al., 2021), early onset serious mental illness (Weintraub et al., 2022), sexual minority stress (Seager van Dyk et al., under review).
There are many adaptations of the UP-C/A for different treatment settings, cultures, and languages.
Research has examined the success of the UP-C/A in various settings as well as in many countries and cultures. UP-A has been studied in community clinics (Ehrenreich-May et al., 2025), while UP-C has been studied in residential and intensive outpatient settings (Kennedy et al., 2023), pediatric settings (Landoll et al., 2021) and residential care for maltreated youth (Dimitropolous et al. 2023). The UP-C and UP-A have been translated into over 10 languages and studied in culturally-responsive ways within several countries around the world.
High satisfaction with the Unified Protocols for Children and Adolescents
Numerous studies indicate that families report high satisfaction with the UP-C and UP-A (Bilek & Ehrenreich-May, 2012; Fujisato et al., 2021; Caiado et al., 2025; Pan et al., 2025).