Anxiety Sensitivity Among Anxious Children

Employed the Diagnostic Interview Schedule for Children to show that children diagnosed with an anxiety disorder score significantly higher on the Childhood Anxiety Sensitivity Index (CASI) than nondiagnosed children. Interviews and self-report measures regarding the child were completed by 201 children and their parents from a metropolitan area military community who were participating in a National Institute of Mental Health epidemiological survey. An analysis of variance was used to compare CASI scoring across three groups: children receiving anxiety diagnoses, children receiving externalizing diagnoses but no anxiety diagnosis, and children receiving no diagnoses. Although scoring on the CASI differentiated anxious children from the no-diagnosis control group, it did not differentiate anxious children from those receiving externalizing diagnoses. Implications of the findings for the validity of the CASI, the issue of anxiety sensitivity as a component of some externalizing disorders, and suggestions f...

[1]  S. Reiss,et al.  Anxiety sensitivity in 1984 and panic attacks in 1987 , 1992 .

[2]  R. McNally,et al.  How does anxiety sensitivity vary across the anxiety disorders , 1992 .

[3]  Rolf A. Peterson,et al.  Childhood Anxiety Sensitivity Index , 1991 .

[4]  S. Pliszka.  Effect of anxiety on cognition, behavior, and stimulant response in ADHD. , 1989, Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

[5]  C. G. Last,et al.  Comorbidity among Childhood Anxiety Disorders , 1987, The Journal of nervous and mental disease.

[6]  R. McNally,et al.  Effects of anxiety sensitivity on the response to hyperventilation. , 1987, Journal of abnormal psychology.

[7]  W. Cox.  An indication for use of imipramine in attention deficit disorder. , 1982, The American journal of psychiatry.

[8]  C. Reynolds,et al.  What i think and feel: A revised measure of children's manifest anxiety , 1978, Journal of abnormal child psychology.

[9]  W. Silverman,et al.  Age differences in the reliability of parent and child reports of child anxious symptomatology using a structured interview. , 1992, Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry.

[10]  R. A. Peterson,et al.  Effects of anxiety sensitivity on emotional response to a stress task. , 1990, Behaviour research and therapy.

[11]  R. McNally,et al.  Anxiety sensitivity and panic attacks in a nonclinical population. , 1990, Behaviour research and therapy.

[12]  R. McNally,et al.  Anxiety sensitivity and history of panic as predictors of response to hyperventilation. , 1989, Behaviour research and therapy.

[13]  Phil A. Silva,et al.  DSM-III disorders in preadolescent children. Prevalence in a large sample from the general population. , 1987, Archives of general psychiatry.

[14]  R. A. Peterson,et al.  The Anxiety Sensitivity Index: Construct validity and factor analytic structure. , 1987 .

[15]  S. Reiss,et al.  Anxiety sensitivity, anxiety frequency and the prediction of fearfulness. , 1986, Behaviour research and therapy.