Abstract
Anxiety disorders are common among children and adolescents; almost one-third of this population has an anxiety disorder. The most common anxiety disorders in this population are specific phobia (19.3%), social anxiety disorder/ social phobia (9.1 %), and separation anxiety disorder (7.6 %). Pediatric anxiety disorders are often associated with poor psychosocial functioning, academic underachievement, learning difficulties, substance abuse, relationship problems, and suicide behaviors. Psychotherapy, particularly cognitive behavioral therapy as a stand-alone treatment or in combination with medication, is found to be efficacious in the treatment of various anxiety disorders. The early recognition and treatment of anxiety disorders result in better long-term outcomes in children and adolescents. This article summarizes the evidence-based pharmacologic treatments for anxiety disorders in youth, including social anxiety disorder generalized anxiety disorder, separation anxiety disorder, and panic disorder.
Highlights
BackgroundAnxiety disorders are the most common psychiatric disorders in adolescents and young adults with a lifetime prevalence of up to 30%
Anxiety disorders have an early onset age among children and adolescents with specific phobia and separation anxiety disorders occurring during childhood at age 6-8, while the age of onset for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), agoraphobia, and panic disorder is usually in adolescence [2,3]
In August 2018, the PubMed and Scopus were systematically searched for relevant publications focused on pharmacological treatments of social anxiety disorder (SAD), GAD, panic disorder and separation anxiety disorder in humans
Summary
Anxiety disorders are the most common psychiatric disorders in adolescents and young adults with a lifetime prevalence of up to 30%. Anxiety disorders are associated with significant functional impairment and the development of the comorbid psychiatric disorder in adulthood They result in a higher risk of cognitive impairment, academic under-achievement, and social dysfunction [7]. Childhood overanxious disorder predicted the development of an overanxious disorder, panic attacks, and depression and conduct disorders in adolescents [9] In this longitudinal study of multiple anxiety disorders in childhood, 20% of the subjects continued to meet criteria for anxiety disorders as young adults and almost all of the initial subjects exhibited poor functioning across domains. The results of the Child/ Adolescent Multimodal Study (CAMS) show that a combination of CBT and sertraline (80.7%) was better than CBT alone (59.7%) or sertraline alone ( 54.9%) to treat non-OCD anxiety disorder (GAD, social phobia, separation anxiety) [11]
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