Anxiety Disorder Symptoms In Children Research Articles

Sluggish cognitive tempo is associated with autistic traits and anxiety disorder symptoms in children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.

Objective:To investigate the association of sluggish cognitive tempo (SCT) with autistic traits (ATs) and anxiety disorder symptoms among children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).Methods:A total of 195 children with a DSM-5 diagnosis of ADHD were included. The Barkley Sluggish Cognitive Tempo Scale (BSCTS) was used to measure SCT symptoms. Other study measures included the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ), Screen for Child Anxiety and Related Disorders (SCARED), Turgay DSM-IV Disruptive Behavior Disorders Rating Scale (T-DSM-IV-S), and Conners’ Teacher Rating Scale (CTRS-R).Results:The frequency of SCT was 30.3% (n=59) in the whole group. Those with SCT had higher total AQ and SCARED scores. Significant associations and correlations were also found between SCT and certain subscores of AQ and SCARED. According to the linear regression model, the total score and social skills, attention switching, and imagination scores of AQ, as well as generalized anxiety and panic/somatic scores of SCARED and the total and inattention scores of parent T-DSM-IV, were predictive of SCT total score (p < 0.05).Conclusions:SCT is associated with ATs and anxiety disorders. Children with ADHD and SCT symptoms should be screened for such conditions.

The Youth Anxiety Measure for DSM-5 (YAM-5): Development and First Psychometric Evidence of a New Scale for Assessing Anxiety Disorders Symptoms of Children and Adolescents

The Youth Anxiety Measure for DSM-5 (YAM-5) is a new self- and parent-report questionnaire to assess anxiety disorder symptoms in children and adolescents in terms of the contemporary classification system. International panels of childhood anxiety researchers and clinicians were used to construct a scale consisting of two parts: part one consists of 28 items and measures the major anxiety disorders including separation anxiety disorder, selective mutism, social anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder, whereas part two contains 22 items that focus on specific phobias and (given its overlap with situational phobias) agoraphobia. In general, the face validity of the new scale was good; most of its items were successfully linked to the intended anxiety disorders. Notable exceptions were the selective mutism items, which were frequently considered as symptoms of social anxiety disorder, and some specific phobia items especially of the natural environment, situational and other type, that were regularly assigned to an incorrect category. A preliminary investigation of the YAM-5 in non-clinical (N = 132) and clinically referred (N = 64) children and adolescents indicated that the measure was easy to complete by youngsters. In addition, support was found for the psychometric qualities of the measure: that is, the internal consistency was good for both parts, as well as for most of the subscales, the parent–child agreement appeared satisfactory, and there was also evidence for the validity of the scale. The YAM-5 holds promise as a tool for assessing anxiety disorder symptoms in children and adolescents.

Anxiety disorder symptoms in children and adolescents: Differences by age and gender in a community sample

IntroductionAnxiety symptoms in childhood and adolescence are an important risk factor for developing anxiety disorders in subsequent developmental stages. This study examines the frequency and characteristics of the symptoms of the principal anxiety disorders in children and adolescents using a self-report questionnaire based on the diagnostic categories of the American Psychiatric Association (APA) manual. Materials and methodsA cross-sectional, non-interventional study was conducted on 2522 children and adolescents aged 8 to 17 years (49% males), enrolled from different schools in the Province of Alicante who completed the Spence Children's Anxiety Scale. ResultsThe mean score obtained on the scale (range: 0–114) was 25.15 (standard deviation (SD)=13.54). More than one in four (26.41%) of the children and adolescents showed high scores in any anxiety disorder. The anxiety symptoms due to separation were the most frequent in the sample (5.5%), followed by physical fears (5.1%). Girls scored significantly higher in all disorders (P<.001), except in obsessive-compulsive disorder. Differences were found as regards to age in all disorders, except physical fears, but the effect sizes were only in anxiety due to separation, which decreased with age, and generalised anxiety, which was higher in adolescents than in children. ConclusionsFrom the mental health perspective, it is important to be able to detect anxiety symptoms in children from 8 years onwards, in order to intervene early and prevent the development of anxiety disorders in later life.

Threat Perception Bias in Nonreferred, Socially Anxious Children

Investigated whether socially anxious children display a threat perception bias. A sample of 252 primary school children ages 8 to 13 years were exposed to ambiguous stories of social situations and instructed to find out as quickly as possible whether a story was scary. Furthermore, children were invited to tell how each story would end and to judge how they would feel when actually confronted with that situation. The main results can be summarized as follows. First, socially anxious children displayed lower thresholds for threat perception than control children. In other words, compared with control children, socially anxious children needed to hear fewer sentences of a story before deciding it was scary. Furthermore, socially anxious children more frequently perceived threat while listening to the stories than did control children. Finally, socially anxious children more often interpreted the stories as threatening and displayed higher levels of negative feelings and cognitions in relation to these stories compared with control children. These findings fit nicely in current information-processing theories of childhood anxiety. An additional aim of this study was to investigate the convergent validity of the social phobia scales of 2 recently developed self-report questionnaires for measuring anxiety disorder symptoms in children: the Spence Children's Anxiety Scale (Spence, 1998) and the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (Birmaher et al., 1997). Results indicated that the social phobia scale of the Spence Children's Anxiety Scale and the extended social phobia scale of the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders correlated substantially with a specific measure of social anxiety, the Social Anxiety Scale for Children-Revised.

Monitoring and anxiety disorders symptoms in children

The current study investigated the relationship between the monitoring coping style and anxiety disorder symptoms in children. Primary school children (N=117) aged between 8 and 12 years completed the Monitoring and Blunting Scale for Children (MBSC), an instrument that intends to measure monitoring coping style and the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED), an instrument that measures anxiety disorder symptoms of children. Children who strongly relied on a high monitoring coping style displayed higher levels of anxiety disorder symptoms compared to other children. This result is in agreement with previous research showing adverse effects of the monitoring coping style.

Correlations among two self-report questionnaires for measuring DSM-defined anxiety disorder symptoms in children: the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders and the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale

The Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED) and the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale (SCAS) are recently developed self-report questionnaires for measuring DSM-IV defined anxiety disorder symptoms in children. The present study examined correlations among these measures in a large sample of Dutch school children (N=1011). Results showed that there was a strong correlation between the total anxiety scores of these instruments (r=0.89). Furthermore, most of the SCARED subscales were found to be convincingly connected to their SCAS counterparts. Finally, a confirmatory factor analysis revealed that SCARED and SCAS anxiety disorder subscales loaded uniquely on separate but intercorrelated factors (i.e., the DSM-IV anxiety disorder categories). These findings can be taken as evidence for the concurrent validity of the SCARED and the SCAS. Although these measures were developed independently, they seem to measure highly similar constructs, viz anxiety symptoms which can be clustered into the anxiety disorder categories as described in the DSM-IV.