Psychosocial Impairment Associated With Anxiety in Children

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Abstract
Children identified as highly anxious and withdrawn by their teachers were compared to nonanxious children on independent measures of adjustment. From a sample of 325 children, 24 were identified who received extremely high teacher ratings on the Revised Behavior Problem Checklist (RBPC) Anxiety-Withdrawal factor. When contrasted with children receiving low teacher ratings on the RBPC Anxiety-Withdrawal subscale, teacher-identified anxious children were found to demonstrate a broad range of psychosocial difficulties. As assessed by peer, teacher, and self-reports, anxious-withdrawn children showed impairment in peer relations and in levels of depression, self-esteem, attention, school performance, and social behavior when compared to nonanxious children. Overall, the present findings lend empirical support to the forms of psychopathology purported to be associated with childhood anxiety disorders in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association, 1980).

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