Social anxiety disorder is Associated with Vaccination attitude,stress, and coping responses during COVID-19

Cognitive Therapy and Research - Individuals with Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) may be at a higher risk for negative outcomes during the COVID-19 pandemic due to isolation that is both...     

Gaze as an Indicator of Selective Attention in Adolescents with Social Anxiety Disorder

Cognitive Therapy and Research - Attention bias, conceptualized to be involved in the development and maintenance of SAD, may differentiate teens with SAD from those without. Although SAD typically...     

Caution When Screening for Autism among Socially Anxious Youth

Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders - Social anxiety disorder (SAD) is commonly comorbid with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Here, in a sample of 86 children and adolescents...     

Childhood headaches: Behavioral assessment and treatment

Many children experience chronic headaches, particularly migraine and tension headaches. These can be quite debilitating for the child and produce much concern from caregivers and health professionals. Following a discussion of pathophysiology and epidemiological findings, we emphasize the need for nonpharmacological interventions for chronic headaches. This review explores advances in the behavioral assessment and treatment of childhood headaches. We outline behavioral assessment procedures, including the behavioral interview, headache questionnaires, self-monitoring, caregiver observations, and psychophysiological recording. Treatment typically encompasses relaxation training, biofeedback, assertion training, and cognitive therapy. Parental involvement is also one emphasized component in behavioral approaches to treatment. Our review suggests that behavioral treatment strategies are effective in the management of childhood headaches, although most of the research support appears limited to relaxation training and biofeedback. Nonetheless, behavioral assessment and treatment of childhood headaches appears to be a promising clinical and research direction.     

Social Anxiety Predicts Aggression in Children with ASD: Clinical Comparisons with Socially Anxious and Oppositional Youth

The present study examined the degree to which social anxiety predicts aggression in children with high functioning autism spectrum disorders (HFASD, n = 20) compared to children with Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD, n = 20) or with Oppositional Defiant Disorder or Conduct Disorder (ODD/CD, n = 20). As predicted, children with HFASD reported levels of humiliation/rejection fears commensurate with children with SAD and exhibited aggression at levels commensurate with ODD/CD, and a curvilinear relationship between social fears and aggression was found in the HFASD group only. Results indicate the possibility of an optimal level of social-evaluative fears that is unique for children with HFASD; too little social fear or too much may contribute to problems with aggression.     

Parent Management Training and Collaborative & Proactive Solutions: A Randomized Control Trial for Oppositional Youth

This study examined the efficacy of Collaborative & Proactive Solutions (CPS) in treating oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) in youth by comparing this novel treatment to Parent Management Training (PMT), a well-established treatment, and a waitlist control (WLC) group. One hundred thirty-four youth (ages 7–14, 61.9% male, 83.6% White) who fulfilled Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (4th ed.) criteria for ODD were randomized to CPS, PMT, or WLC groups. ODD was assessed with semistructured diagnostic interviews, clinical global severity and improvement ratings, and parent report measures. Assessments were completed pretreatment, posttreatment, and at 6 months following treatment. Responder and remitter analyses were undertaken using intent-to-treat mixed-models analyses. Chronological age, gender, and socioeconomic status as well as the presence of comorbid attention deficit/hyperactivity and anxiety disorders were examined as predictors of treatment outcome. Both treatment conditions were superior to the WLC condition but did not differ from one another in either our responder or remitter analyses. Approximately 50% of youth in both active treatments were diagnosis free and were judged to be much or very much improved at posttreatment, compared to 0% in the waitlist condition. Younger age and presence of an anxiety disorder predicted better treatment outcomes for both PMT and CPS. Treatment gains were maintained at 6-month follow-up. CPS proved to be equivalent to PMT and can be considered an evidence-based, alternative treatment for youth with ODD and their families.     

The developmental psychopathology of social anxiety disorder.

The role of developmental theory and developmental psychopathology in understanding the development, maintenance, and course of social anxiety disorder (SAD) is explored in this article. Following a brief examination of the phenomenology of SAD in youth, we provide an overview of the tenets of developmental psychology and developmental psychopathology, including the principles of equifinality (i.e., the same outcome can result from diverse developmental pathways) and multifinality (i.e., the same risk factor can lead to or result in different outcomes). We review various pathways for the acquisition and maintenance of SAD (e.g., genetic and temperamental influences, parental factors, conditioning or learning experiences, peer influences, and cognitive styles) and conclude, consistent with a developmental psychopathology perspective, that multiple pathways to SAD exist and that the various precursors to SAD do not invariably lead to SAD. We suggest that specificity in outcome is afforded by the combination, timing, and circumstances surrounding these various risk factors. Finally, we propose studies to test the viability of the developmental psychopathology model in understanding SAD.     

Comorbidity as a predictor and moderator of treatment outcome in youth with anxiety, affective, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, and oppositional/conduct disorders

In the present review, we examine one of the critical issues that have been raised about evidence-based treatments and their portability to real-world clinical settings: namely, the presence of comorbidity in the participants who have been treated in these studies and whether the presence of comorbidity predicts or moderates treatment outcomes. In doing so, we examine treatment outcomes for the four most commonly occurring childhood psychiatric disorders: Anxiety disorders, affective disorders, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and oppositional defiant disorder (ODD)/conduct disorder (CD). For each of these disorders, we first review briefly the prevalence of comorbidity in epidemiological and clinical samples and then highlight the evidence-based treatments for these disorders. We next determine the effects of comorbidity on treatment outcomes for these disorders. For the most part, comorbidity in the treated samples is the rule, not the exception. However, the majority of studies have not explored whether comorbidity predicts or moderates treatment outcomes. For the not insignificant number of studies that have examined this issue, comorbidity has not been found to affect treatment outcomes. Notable exceptions are highlighted and recommendations for future research are presented.     

The utility of measures of child and adolescent anxiety: a meta-analytic review of the Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale, the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children, and the Child Behavior Checklist.

We evaluated the ability of the Revised Children's Manifest Anxiety Scale (RCMAS), the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children (STAIC), and the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) to (a) discriminate between youth with an anxiety disorder and youth without a disorder, (b) discriminate between youth with an anxiety disorder and youth with either externalizing disorders or affective disorders, and (c) measure treatment change. In addition, variables, including age and sex, were explored as possible moderators of instrument utility. A meta-analysis of 43 articles was conducted. A large effect size was found when the instruments were used to compare youth with an anxiety disorder to youth without a disorder. When comparing anxious youth to psychiatric control groups, the picture was mixed; the instruments were found to be useful when discriminating between youth with an anxiety disorder and youth with an externalizing disorder, but not between youth with an anxiety disorder and children and adolescents with an affective disorder. The RCMAS, STAIC, and CBCL were found to be moderately sensitive to treatment gains.