Looking to the future of research in pediatric anxiety disorders

Abstract

The rapid emergence of translational developmental neuroscience as the key driver in understanding the onset of mental illness, the restructuring of academic health science centers on the NIH Roadmap, and dramatic shifts in drug, biological, device, and psychosocial intervention development all have important consequences for pediatric anxiety disorders as a field. This article, which tracks the final presentation at a day-long symposium on pediatric anxiety disorders at the 2010 annual meeting of the Anxiety Disorders Association of America (ADAA), will try to outline where the field will head over the next decade as these forces combine to shape research and practice. After 20 years of large comparative treatment trials that have defined the place of current generation treatments, the field is shifting toward interventions that will emerge from the revolution in translational developmental neuroscience and that herald the dawn of stratified and ultimately personalized medicine. With a much more efficient discovery to translational continuum, intervention development and dissemination will benefit from the concurrent transformation of the clinical and clinical research enterprise. Dramatic advances in science and changes in the structure of medicine will condition the future of clinical research across every therapeutic area in medicine. For the field of pediatric anxiety disorders to thrive it will be important to embrace and actively participate in this revolution so that anxious youth are viewed as a key target population and, consequently, preemptive, preventive, and curative interventions will be developed for children by first intent.