Abstract
Anxiety disorders are the most common psychiatric disorder in children and young people. They can be prevented in those at risk, but families do not always take up opportunities to participate in prevention programmes. This qualitative study aimed to understand what families with children who were at prospective risk of anxiety disorders perceived to be the barriers to access to targeted anxiety prevention programmes, and to explore what would help facilitate access. We used Information Power to determine our sample size, and individually interviewed seven young people (14–17 years) who had anxiety disorders and their mothers, each of whom had pre-natal anxiety disorders. We transcribed all interviews and thematically analyzed them to identify perceived barriers and facilitators to targeted anxiety prevention programmes. Perceived potential barriers to access included possible negative consequences of anxiety prevention, difficulties in identifying anxiety as a problem and concerns about how professions would respond to raising concerns about anxiety. Possible facilitators included promoting awareness of anxiety prevention programmes and involvement of schools in promotion and delivery of prevention. Our findings illustrate that implementation of targeted anxiety prevention could be improved through (i) the provision of tools for parents to recognize anxiety in their children as a problem, (ii) promotion of awareness, as well as delivery, of anxiety prevention via schools and (iii) the involvement of parents and possibly adolescents in the intervention programme, but not younger children.
Highlights
Anxiety disorders are the most common psychiatric disorder in children and young people (CYP) [1]
The current study aimed to explore what adolescents with anxiety disorders who, as infants, had been identified as at risk for anxiety disorders on the basis of maternal anxiety disorders and/or behavioural inhibition (BI) and their mothers (i) perceived to be the potential barriers to access to targeted anxiety prevention programmes and, (ii) what characteristics of targeted anxiety prevention programmes could help facilitate access to these programmes at any time between identification of risk and onset of disorder
Our analyses focused on participants’ views and experiences of potential barriers and facilitators to access to targeted anxiety prevention programmes from the perspectives of adolescents with anxiety disorders who, in infancy, were at risk of anxiety disorders and their mothers, who had a history of anxiety disorders
Summary
This was because three characteristics of our study provide us with high information power: our aim was narrow rather than broad; our sample specificity was dense rather than sparse; and our dialogue was strong rather than weak. Interviewers explained that the aim of the study was to contribute to the development of accessible anxiety prevention programmes, as well as their reasons for doing the research
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