Birgit Mayer

How serious are common childhood fears

OBJECTIVE The present study examined the clinical status of common childhood fears. METHOD Fears of the 290 children aged 8 to 13 years were assessed and then their severity was explored by means of a structured diagnostic interview measuring anxiety disorders according to the criteria of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). RESULTS Childhood fears reflect significant anxiety disorders in a substantial minority (i.e. 22.8%) of the children. CONCLUSIONS In most children, childhood fears are part of the normal development. However, in some children, these fears reflect serious anxiety problems which interfere with daily routine.

The Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED) and traditional childhood anxiety measures

The Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED) is a self-report questionnaire that measures symptoms of DSM-IV linked anxiety disorders in children. This article presents two studies that investigated the relationship between the SCARED, on the one hand, and two other widely used anxiety measures for children, namely the Revised Childrens Manifest Anxiety Scale (RCMAS) and the Fear Survey Schedule for Children-Revised (FSSC-R), on the other hand. Results indicate that SCARED scores are positively and in a theoretically meaningful way related to RCMAS and FSSC-R scores, and thus provide evidence for the concurrent validity of the SCARED.

Symptoms of Anxiety, Depression, and Aggression in Non-clinical Children: Relationships with Self-report and Performance-based Measures of Attention and Effortful Control

This study investigated the relation between the regulative trait of effortful control, and in particular attention control, and psychopathological symptoms in a sample of 207 non-clinical children aged 8–12 years. For this purpose, children completed self-report scales for measuring regulative traits and various types of psychopathological symptoms (i.e., anxiety, depression, and aggression) and were tested with a neuropsychological battery for measuring attention/effortful control capacity. Results indicated that self-report and performance-based measures of attention/effortful control were at best moderately correlated. Further, it was found that self-report indexes of attention/effortful control were clearly negatively related to psychopathological symptoms, which provides support for the notion that low regulation is associated with higher levels of psychopathology. Finally, the performance-based measure of attention/effortful control was not convincingly related to psychopathological symptoms.

The revised version of the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED-R): treatment sensitivity in an early intervention trial for childhood anxiety disorders.

OBJECTIVES The revised version of the Screen for Childhood Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED-R) is a recently developed self-report questionnaire for measuring DSM-IV defined anxiety disorder symptoms in children. The current study examined the treatment sensitivity of the SCARED-R. METHODS Thirty-six children (aged 8-13 years) who fulfilled the criteria for generalized anxiety disorder, separation anxiety disorder, and/or social phobia received either group or individual cognitive-behavioural treatment. Children completed the SCARED-R and a traditional measure of childhood anxiety, the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children (STAIC), at three points in time: (1) 6 months before treatment (i.e. baseline), (2) pre-treatment, and (3) post-treatment. RESULTS Results showed that childrens SCARED-R and STAIC scores did not change from baseline to pre-treatment, but significantly declined from pre-treatment to post-treatment. An additional finding of the present study was that group and individual CBT were equally effective in reducing childrens anxiety symptoms. CONCLUSIONS It can be concluded that the SCARED-R reliably taps treatment effects and thus should be regarded as a useful self-report index of childhood anxiety in clinical and research settings. Furthermore, the data support the notion that CBT should be generally regarded as an efficacious intervention for anxiety disordered children.

Mental illness stigma and disclosure: consequences of coming out of the closet.

The present study investigated disclosure patterns among mental health consumers (N = 500) and examined the relationships among disclosure, perceived stigmatization, perceived social support, and self-esteem. Results suggest that selective disclosure optimizes social support and limits stigmatization. Perceived stigmatization has a detrimental impact on self-esteem, especially for those who are relatively open about their mental disorder.

A Space Odyssey: Experimental Manipulation of Threat Perception and Anxiety-Related Interpretation Bias in Children

This study provides a first test of an experimental method, the “space odyssey” paradigm, that was designed to manipulate interpretation bias in children. Seventy non-clinical children aged 8–12 years first completed a standardized anxiety questionnaire. Following this, they completed the space odyssey paradigm to induce either a negative or a positive interpretation bias. After this stage of interpretation training, children were presented with a series of ambiguous vignettes for which they had to rate perceived levels of threat as an index of interpretation bias. Results indicated that the space odyssey paradigm was successful in training interpretations: children in the negative training condition quickly learned to choose negative outcomes, while children in the positive training condition rapidly learned to select positive outcomes. Most importantly, children’s subsequent threat perception scores for the ambiguous vignettes were affected by the manipulation. That is, children in the negative training condition perceived more threat than children in the positive training condition. Interestingly, the effects of training were most pronounced in high anxious children. Directions for future research with this paradigm are briefly discussed.

Danger is lurking everywhere: The relation between anxiety and threat perception abnormalities in normal children

The present study examined the relation between anxiety and depression and threat perception abnormalities. Children were exposed to stories describing social situations. Some of the stories were ambiguous (i.e., these stories contained information that could be interpreted as threatening) whereas other stories were non-threatening (i.e., these stories contained no obvious trace of threat). From childrens responses to the stories, several threat perception indices were derived. Childrens level of anxiety and depression were assessed by means of self-report questionnaires. Results indicated that high levels of anxiety were accompanied by a high frequency of threat perception, high ratings of threat, a high frequency of threatening interpretations, high levels of negative feelings and cognitions, and an early detection of threat. Interestingly, significant associations between anxiety and threat perception abnormalities were not only observed in response to ambiguous stories but also in relation to non-threatening scenarios. Furthermore, depression was also connected with threat perception distortions. Even when controlling for anxiety levels, depression remained significantly related to threat frequency, threat ratings, and threat thresholds.

The Koala Fear Questionnaire: a standardized self-report scale for assessing fears and fearfulness in pre-school and primary school children

The Koala Fear Questionnaire (KFQ) is a standardized self-report scale for assessing fears and fearfulness in children aged between 4 and 12 years. The current article presents six studies which examined the reliability and validity of the KFQ. Study 1 (N=108) demonstrated that the visual fear scales of Koala bears as employed in the KFQ are highly comparable to the standard 3-point scales that are used in other childhood fear measures. Study 2 (N=163) provided support for the convergent validity of the KFQ in a sample of 8- to 14-year-old children. That is, the scale correlated substantially with alternative measures of childhood fear and anxiety. Study 3 (N=189) showed that the KFQ possesses good internal consistency and test-retest stability in a group of 8- to 11-year-old children. The results of Studies 4 (N=129) and 5 (N=176) indicated that the KFQ is suitable for children aged 4 to 6 years and demonstrated that the psychometric properties of the scale in younger children are highly similar to those obtained in older children. Study 6 (N=926) showed that the factor structure of the KFQ was theoretically meaningful: although the data clearly pointed in the direction of one factor of general fearfulness, spurs of the commonly found five-factor solution of childhood fear were found in the KFQ. Altogether, the KFQ seems to be a valuable addition to the instrumentarium of clinicians and researchers who are working with fearful and anxious children.

The Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED): Relationship with anxiety and depression in normal children

Abstract The current article presents two studies that investigated the concurrent validity of the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED), a self-report questionnaire that measures symptoms of DSM-IV linked anxiety disorders in children. Study 1 ( N = 68) addressed the connection between the SCARED, on the one hand, and state anxiety and trait anxiety as indexed by the Spielberger State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children (STAIC), on the other hand. Study 2 ( N = 81) examined the relationship between the SCARED and a measure of depression, the Depression Questionnaire for Children (DQC). Results of both studies showed that, in general, SCARED scores are positively related to levels of trait anxiety, state anxiety, and depression. Furthermore, whereas symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder and separation anxiety disorder were strongly linked to levels of psychopathology, the three specific phobia scales of the SCARED were not convincingly associated with anxiety and depression. Altogether, the findings support the concurrent validity of the SCARED.

Hypochondriasis: the role of fear-confirming reasoning.

We investigated whether hypochondriacal patients are prone to selectively search for danger-confirming information when asked to judge the validity of conditional rules in the context of general and health threats. Therefore, hypochodtriacal patients (n = 27) and a healthy control group (n = 27) were presented with modified Wason Selection Tasks (WSTs) pertaining to general and health threats. The WSTs contained safety rules (If P then safe) and danger rules (If P then danger). Subjects adopted a verificationistic strategy in case of danger rules and tended to look for falsifications in case of safety rules. This danger-confirming reasoning pattern was similar for both types of contexts and not particularly pronounced in hypochondriacal persons. These findings argue against the idea that such a reasoning pattern directly causes hypochondriasis. Yet, in the presence of anxiogenic (hypochondriasis related) convictions such danger-confirming reasoning pattern logically serves to maintain or even enhance hypochondriacal complaints.