ABSTRACT
Behavioral health concerns are surging in pediatric practices. Fortunately, integrated behavioral/medical health clinics are growing and child psychiatrists/psychologists are increasingly embedded in these care settings to help shoulder the clinical load. Routine screening of behavioral health problems in primary care facilities enables early identification and treatment. However, deciding on sound, efficient, and scalable screening measures is sometimes arduous. Accordingly, this article presents a clinician-friendly review of three common instruments useful in screening pediatric behavioral health concerns including anxiety, depression, and conduct problems. Psychometric findings and clinical applications of the Pediatric Symptom Checklist-17 (PSC-17), the Patient Health Questionnaire-9 (PHQ-9), and the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED) are delineated. Finally, clinical implications and recommendations for practicing pediatricians and child psychiatrists are offered.
ABSTRACT
Individuals who are high in anxiety sensitivity (AS) are motivated to avoid sensations of anxiety. Consequently, AS is hypothesized to contribute to overall avoidance of any feared stimuli. No studies have yet examined whether fear of a stimulus is a stronger predictor of behavioral avoidance in individuals who are high in AS compared to individuals who are low in AS. We examined whether AS moderates the association between fear of spiders and behavioral avoidance of spider stimuli in 50 clinically anxious youth. Fear of spiders significantly predicted avoidance of spider stimuli in youth high in AS but not in youth low in AS. These results provide support for the role of AS in avoidant behavior and help to explain the link between AS and the anxiety disorders. The results have implications for exposure-based anxiety treatments and highlight the importance of increasing anxious patients' ability to tolerate sensations of anxiety.
