Maternal phobic anxiety and child anxiety [An article from: Journal of Anxiety Disorders]

This digital document is a journal article from Journal of Anxiety Disorders, published by Elsevier in 2005. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
The present study examined the relation between maternal anxiety symptoms and child anxiety symptoms and evaluated whether a reporting bias is associated with maternal anxiety. Fifty-seven mother-child pairs participated. All children had features or diagnoses of separation anxiety disorder (SAD), generalized anxiety disorder, and/or social phobia. Measures of maternal symptomatology and child anxiety were administered. Higher levels of maternal phobic anxiety on the Brief Symptom Inventory were significantly associated with higher levels of separation anxiety in children. After controlling for clinician rating of SAD severity, maternal phobic anxiety emerged as a significant predictor of maternal ratings of child separation anxiety, accounting for 19% of the variance. Phobic mothers endorsed levels of separation anxiety in their children that exceeded levels endorsed by clinicians, suggesting maternal overreporting.