Children 's Manifest Anxiety Scale

Childhood anxiety is quickly becoming the most challenging of all childhood problems. As the root of most problems, anxiety covers a long range of stressors that spread quickly if not treated or relieved early in life. Anxious feelings in children varies from children of all backgrounds. All people feel anxious at one point or another, and it is only when children are affected daily and unable to be calmed when people should become concerned. Many times, children are feeling overwhelmed and cannot express themselves or struggle to understand his/her feelings. Social and emotional development then plays a big part when facing concerns like anxiety in a young childhood environment. Teachers and caregivers need to take a step back and focus on what the child needs rather than what he/she can do to make children calm down. Through interventions, patience, and caring teachers, a young child does not need to be known as "The Child Who is Anxious", he/she can just be a child.

The Beck Youth Inventory Test was developed in 2001 by Judith Beck, Aaron Beck, John Jolly, and Robert Steer. The purpose of this psychological testing tool is a brief self-report to measure the distress in children and adolescents (Flanagan & Henington, 2005). The Beck Youth Inventory includes using five self-administered scales. The five tests include the Beck Depression Inventory, Beck Anxiety Inventory, Beck Anger Inventory, Beck Disruptive Inventory, and the Beck Self-Concept Inventory. These tests can be administered individually or in combination to the youth. The intended population for this test is ages 7-14 years (Flanagan & Henington, 2005). This test is used to assess symptoms of depression, anxiety, anger, disruptive

However, Diaz and Motta focused their study on adolescent participants and on PTSD. For this study, participants were between the ages of 14 and 17 and were all female from a residential treatment facility that met the criteria for PTSD (Diaz & Motta, 2008). The researchers used the following self-report inventories to measure the level of PTSD: (a) Child PTSD Symptom Scale [CPSS] (Foa, Johnson, Feeny, & Treadwell, 2001), (b) Trauma Symptom Checklist for Children [TSCC] (Briere, 1996), (c) Multidimensional Anxiety Scale for Children [MASC] (March, 1997), (d) Children’s Depression Inventory [CDI] (Kovacs, 1992) (Diaz & Motta, 2008).

Current epidemiological data suggest anxiety disorders are the most prevalent type of childhood psychological disorders. Generalized Anxiety Disorder or GAD is described by excessive worrying about a variety of events, including those in the past, present, and future. Children with this disorder worry excessively about a number of issues, including past conversations or actions, upcoming events, school, family health, their own health, competence in sports or academics, and world events. Typically, children experiencing such excessive worry find it difficult to control the amount of time that they worry, and the worrying interferes in their daily life. Sometimes children don’t realize their anxiety is excessive considering the situation.

Adolescence is a difficult time period in a young person’s transition into their later stage of both physical and mental development. Mood disorders are often overlooked during this time for the brain becoming more developed; however among children, anxiety disorders seem to be the most common disorders to be experienced (Nelson; Israel, pg 112). Barlow (2002) defines anxiety as a future-oriented emotion that is characterized by the inability to be in control and predict future events that can be potentially dangerous to the individual. Anxiety shares commonalities with fear, but the difference between the two being that fear is the initial response made from a present threat, where anxiety is due to a unknown future event. A common

Jordan was administered three assessment measures to help the clinician identify the severity of his anxiety-based symptoms. The Piers-Harris Self-Concept Scale main purpose is to provide an overall view of Jordan’s self-perception. This scale will assist the therapist by finding problematic areas that will be addressed in treatment. Jordan’s self-reported baseline was 39. The Screen for Child Anxiety Related Disorders (SCARED) focuses on assessing the severity of anxiety symptoms. Jordan’s self- reported baseline is a 39. The CES-DC scale assess for depression and Jordan’s self-reported baseline is 17. Based off the self-reported measures Jordan does not meet the criteria for a formal diagnosis due to the time (duration)of the symptoms. Jordan has displayed the requisite symptoms for less than 6 months. He did however, meet criteria for subclinical generalized anxiety disorder. The data from the anxiety and negative affectivity questioners indicate that Jordan has moderate but not severe levels of discomfort. Additionally, Jordan’s level of self-esteem was good and his level of depression was low. Jordan’s 12-week treatment and sessions will include the following; 1-2 engagement, 3-4 psycho-education about anxiety with Jordan and his parents, 5-6 exposure element techniques, 7-8 relation techniques, 9-10 positive self-talk, and 11-12 termination.

Stress and anxiety affect a large segment of the child and adolescent population. Numerous stressors from a wide range of domains contribute to the current levels of subclinical anxiety and diagnosed anxiety disorders. Without effective coping strategies, the cumulative effect of these stressors can lead to the clinical diagnosis of one or more anxiety disorders. Left untreated, these disorders can carry severe long-term consequences, including social, cognitive, and academic impairments. Furthermore, these deficiencies can lead to significant limitations in adulthood, such as reduced career choices, substance abuse, and an increase in the use of both mental and physical health care.

Thesis Statement: Early Anxiety is stemmed from many factors, however the main cause of anxiety in adolescents is directly related to parenting and/or family influences.

The PSWQ-C is a 14 item self-report questionnaire designed to assess worry in children and adolescents with scores ranging from 0 to 42 with higher scores representing greater tendency to worry. Amanda obtained a score of 10 on the PSWQ-C. More specifically, her score falls in the 55th percentile for females her age, which indicates that she does not experience excessive worry. This is consistent with the information gathered from Mrs. Williams and Amanda from the clinical interviews and the results of the BASC-3.

The Multidimensional Anxiety Scale for Children (MASC) is a standardized measure of anxiety. It is compromised of 39-items that are based on self-report. Not only does that MASC have a total score, it also includes a factor index that includes, harm avoidance, physical symptoms, separation anxiety and social anxiety (March et al., 1997). As a starting point, of developing the MASC, no clusters of expected anxiety symptoms were clusters together, only hypothesized to be cognitive, physical, behavioural and emotional. After developing and administering the test, a varimax rotation was used to derive four factor index scores of physical symptoms, social anxiety, separation anxiety and harm avoidance (March et al., 1997). This test is used to measure

Chu, Skriner, and Zandberg (2014) summarized the use of multilevel growth analysis used to formulate change in anxious youth with cognitive behavior therapy and by pinpointing youth collaborations with therapeutic alliance trajectory. In the study, counselors were able to evaluate therapeutic alliances between the youth patient and counselor (Chu et al., 2014). While conducting the study, they used numerous of evidence-based interventions that established short and long term effectiveness with cognitive behavior therapy approach. In previous research, it was determined that youth anxiety with cognitive behavior therapy has a success rate of 63%, and social impediments prohibiting effective interventions due to lack of participation with outside intervention strategies (Chu et al.,2014).

This literature review is conducted to explore the social anxiety disorder, its Etiology, prevalence and finally putting focus on the need of a special treatment for adolescent with social anxiety disorder. Anxiety problems are the most common and widespread mental issues and are an area of interest for the medical as well as psychology researchers. These disorders are related to excess fear and anxiety and associated behavioural problems, where an

Anxiety is a common reaction in the human body. So becoming a little scared when watching a movie, or beginning to become nervous right before a test, or maybe even a little shy talking to your crush is completely normal. It starts to become a problem when anxiety takes control and cuts out important things in our life. Children with anxiety might start to feel more often than usual fear, nervousness, shyness, and often will try to avoid social events. Anxiety is a normal part of childhood, and usually the child is just going through a phase and will grow out of it. But when it continuously keeps recurring it begins to become a problem. There are a multitude of anxiety disorder ranging from General Anxiety Disorder(G.A.D), Panic Disorder, Social

This is an article that specifically looks at anxiety in the school setting for adolescents. This article starts off with a story of a girl named Samantha. Samantha is a fourteen year old student that has test taking anxiety. She feels sweaty and would see the nurse daily because of her anxiousness. The article talks about the case of Samantha being common with many students in school. The article then goes into the different characteristics such as worry. Anxiety can manifest in three different ways: behaviorally, physiologically, and cognitively. Many different behaviors that children exhibit because of anxiety are reflected their attempts to control their anxiety. When discussing anxiety, there are different causes of anxiety and

Anxiety and depression (internalizing problems) have increasingly become an issue in youths, with nearly 20% of youths across the world suffering from some form of psychiatric disorder (Eisenberg & Neighbors, 2007). In addition to being widespread, these mental health problems have proven strongly debilitating and impairing for youth quality of life (Costello, Mustillo, Erkanli, Keeler, & Angold, 2003) and positively associated with poor academic achievement and increased suicide risk (Gould, et al., 1998). Moreover, the impacts of these issues on youth mental health carry over into adulthood (Weissman, et al., 1999) and adults who experienced psychiatric problems as children display poorer lifelong functioning if the onset of the problem was earlier in life (Copeland, 2015). As such, it is imperative that researchers develop a better understanding of the risk factors associated with the development of internalizing problems in youth populations.