https://focus.psychiatryonline.org/doi/pdf/10.1176/foc.9.3.foc311

The Neurocircuitry of Fear, Stress, and Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety and Anxiety Disorders in Children and Adolescents: Developmental Issues and Implications for DSM-V

This review discusses conceptual issues in relating temperament to psychopathology, including the disputed relation of temperament to personality in children. A potential integrative framework is discussed that links trait and biological markers of temperament (reactive, incentive-response tendencies) with regulatory processes. This framework is utilized to highlight potential temperamental pathways to specific forms of psychopathology, noting that in some instances their relations may reflect a spectrum model (with psychopathology closely related as an extreme of a temperament-based trait), but in many instances it likely reflects a vulnerability-transaction set of processes. Conduct disorder involves at least two temperamental paths, one emanating from low fear response and one from either high incentive approach or high anger reactivity. Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder also involves at least two temperament pathways, one involving extremely low effortful control and the other likely involving strong approach. Anxiety disorders appear to result from the confluence of high negative emotionality and low effortful control. Hypotheses for future research are presented and limitations discussed.

Temperament and developmental psychopathology

Background: Few longitudinal studies of child and adolescent psychopathology have examined the links between specific childhood anxiety disorders and adolescent psychiatric disorder. In this paper we test the predictive specificity of separation anxiety disorder (SAD), overanxious disorder (OAD), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), and social phobia.

Methods:  Data come from the Great Smoky Mountains Study (GSMS). A representative population sample of children – ages 9, 11, and 13 years at intake – was followed to age 19. Diagnoses of both childhood (before age 13 years) and adolescent psychiatric disorders (age 13 to 19 years) were available from 906 participants.

Results:  Childhood SAD predicted adolescent SAD, whereas OAD was associated with later OAD, panic attacks, depression and conduct disorder (CD). GAD was related only to CD. Social phobia in childhood was associated with adolescent OAD, social phobia, and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).

Conclusions:  Anxiety disorders in childhood are predictors of a range of psychiatric disorders in adolescence. It appears that children meriting a well-defined diagnosis are missed by the current rules for the diagnosis of GAD. Future studies should examine whether OAD deserves reconsideration as a nosological entity.

What do childhood anxiety disorders predict

Maternal stress beginning in infancy may sensitize children to later stress exposure: Effects on cortisol and behavior

OBJECTIVE: The authors sought to examine psychopathological correlates of behavioral inhibition in young offspring of parents with panic disorder and/or major depression. METHOD: Behavioral inhibit...

https://ajp.psychiatryonline.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1176/appi.ajp.158.10.1673

Christine Hérot

Papers

Further evidence of association between behavioral inhibition and social anxiety in children.