The Healthy Primary School of the Future: study protocol of a quasi-experimental study.

BACKGROUND: Unhealthy lifestyles in early childhood are a major global health challenge. These lifestyles often persist from generation to generation and contribute to a vicious cycle of health-related and social problems. This design article presents a study evaluating the effects of two novel healthy school interventions. The main outcome measure will be changes in children's body mass index (BMI). In addition, lifestyle behaviours, academic achievement, child well-being, socio-economic differences, and societal costs will be examined. METHODS: In close collaboration with various stakeholders, a quasi-experimental study was developed, for which children of four intervention schools (n = 1200) in the southern part of the Netherlands are compared with children of four control schools (n = 1200) in the same region. The interventions started in November 2015. In two of the four intervention schools, a whole-school approach named 'The Healthy Primary School of the Future', is implemented with the aim of improving physical activity and dietary behaviour. For this intervention, pupils are offered an extended curriculum, including a healthy lunch, more physical exercises, and social and educational activities, next to the regular school curriculum. In the two other intervention schools, a physical-activity school approach called 'The Physical Activity School', is implemented, which is essentially similar to the other intervention, except that no lunch is provided. The interventions proceed during a period of 4 years. Apart from the effectiveness of both interventions, the process, the cost-effectiveness, and the expected legal implications are studied. Data collection is conducted within the school system. The baseline measurements started in September 2015 and yearly follow-up measurements are taking place until 2019. DISCUSSION: A whole-school approach is a new concept in the Netherlands. Due to its innovative, multifaceted nature and sound scientific foundation, these integrated programmes have the potential to form a template for primary schools worldwide. The effects of this approach may extend further than the outcomes associated with well-being and academic achievement, potentially impacting legal and cultural aspects in our society. TRIAL REGISTRATION: The study protocol was registered in the database ClinicalTrials.gov on 14-06-2016 with the reference number NCT02800616 .

Experimental modification of interpretation bias regarding social and animal fear in children.

Using an experimental bias modification task, an interpretation bias towards or away from threat was induced about animal or social situations in a sample of 103 children split into a young (7-10 years) and old age group (11-15 years). Children rapidly learned to select outcomes of ambiguous situations which were congruent with their assigned modification condition. Following positive modification, children's threat interpretation biases significantly decreased, while threat biases increased (non-significantly) after negative modification. Bias modification effects also varied as a function of age with children appearing particularly vulnerable to acquiring biases about stimuli that were congruent with the normative fears for their age group. Weak age-related modification-congruent effects on younger but not older children's anxiety vulnerability in response to a behavioral task were also observed. However, no consistent effects of bias modification on avoidance behavior were found.

[Developmental trajectories of anxiety disorder symptoms in adolescents: a five-year prospective community study]. / Ontwikkelingstrajecten van angstsymptomen: een vijfjarig prospectief onderzoek onder adolescenten uit de algemene populatie.

BACKGROUND: The relatively recent adoption of modern statistical analysis methods, such as latent growth modelling (lgm), makes it possible to study differences in the individual trajectories of development over time. AIM: To examine prospectively the developmental trajectories of anxiety disorder symptoms in a large sample of adolescents (N = 1,318) from the general population over a period of five years. METHOD: The adolescents were divided into two cohorts: early adolescents (average age 12 at the first measurement) and middle adolescents (average age 16 at the first measurement). Age and gender differences in the developmental trajectories of adolescent anxiety disorder symptoms over time were examined by means of lgm. results Over the course of five years there was a slight decrease in panic disorder, school anxiety and separation anxiety disorder symptoms for all adolescents, with the exception of social phobia symptoms, which remained fairly stable over time. Adolescent girls showed a slight increase in generalised anxiety disorder symptoms over time, whereas these symptoms decreased among adolescent boys. CONCLUSION: The use of individual trajectory-based analyses, enabled us to study advance our understanding of age and gender differences in the development of adolescent anxiety symptoms.

Anxiety sensitivity in children of panic disorder patients.

Anxiety sensitivity (AS), which refers to the tendency to interpret anxiety-related bodily sensations as having potentially harmful somatic, psychological or social consequences, has been proposed as a vulnerability factor for the development of panic disorder (PD). The current study examined the anxiety sensitivity levels in children of parents with panic disorder. Children of panic disorder patients (n = 68) and children of healthy parents (n = 68) filled out the Childhood Anxiety Sensitivity Index, while parents completed the Anxiety Sensitivity Index. Children of parents with panic disorder did not display higher levels of anxiety sensitivity than children of healthy parents. Furthermore, no association between anxiety sensitivity levels of parents with panic disorder and their children was found. Anxiety sensitivity is not clearly manifest in children of parents with panic disorder and might be a developing vulnerability factor that may increase towards late adolescence or early adulthood.

The other side of malingering: supernormality.

Supernormality refers to the tendency to systematically deny the presence of common symptoms (e.g., intrusive thoughts). The current article describes the psychometric qualities of a 37-item self-report measure of supernormality (i.e., Supernormality Scale; SS). The SS was administered to nonclinical individuals (n=95), noncriminal psychiatric patients (n=28), nonpsychiatric delinquents (n=49), and a heterogeneous sample of forensic patients (n=59). Within the healthy control sample, some employees were instructed to feign supernormal behaviour, while others were asked to respond honestly to SS items. Findings indicate that the SS demonstrates adequate test-retest stability and internal consistency. In the forensic patient sample, elevated SS scores were significant related to denial of intrusive thoughts in a thought suppression paradigm. However, accuracy parameters for the SS (i.e., sensitivity and specificity) showed that there is room for improvement. Nevertheless, our findings indicate that the SS might be a useful research tool for measuring denial of common symptoms.

The emotional reasoning heuristic in children.

A previous study by Arntz, Rauner, and Van den Hout (1995; Behaviour Research and Therapy, 33, 917-925) has shown that adult anxiety patients tend to infer danger not only on the basis of objective danger information, but also on the basis of anxiety response information. The current study examined whether this so-called emotional reasoning phenomenon also occurs in children. Normal primary school children (N = 101) first completed scales tapping anxiety disorders symptoms, anxiety sensitivity, and trait anxiety. Next, they were asked to rate danger levels of scripts in which objective danger versus objective safety and anxiety response versus no anxiety response were systematically varied. Evidence was found for a general emotional reasoning effect. That is, children's danger ratings were not only a function of objective danger information, but also, in the case of objective safety scripts, by anxiety response information. This emotional reasoning effect was predicted by levels of anxiety sensitivity and trait anxiety. More specifically, high levels of anxiety sensitivity and trait anxiety were accompanied by a greater tendency to use anxiety-response information as an heuristic for assessing dangerousness of safety scripts. Implications of these findings are briefly discussed.

What is the Revised Fear Survey Schedule for Children measuring?

The Fear Survey Schedule for Children-Revised (FSSC-R) is a widely used self-report questionnaire that purports to measure the number of fears and the overall level of fearfulness in children. A number of studies have shown that the ten most common childhood fears can be found on the Danger and Death subscale of the FSSC-R, with upwards of 50% of children endorsing such fears. However, some researchers (e.g., H. McCathie & S.H. Spence, 1991; Behaviour Research and Therapy, 29, 495-502) have questioned the validity of these findings, suggesting that these items do not reflect actual childhood fears that children have or experience on a daily or regular basis. Rather, they suggest that children are responding to these fear items as if they were actually occurring to them in the here and now. The current study examined the occurrence of five Danger and Death fears from the FSSC-R (i.e., "Not being able to breathe", "Being hit by a car or truck", "Falling from high places", "Bombing attacks or being invaded", and "Fire or getting burned") in a sample of normal school children aged eight to 12 years (N=102). More specifically, we used three different methods to asses these fears: (1). prevalence as determined by the standard FSSC-R procedure, (2). prevalence as determined by a fear list procedure, and (3). actual occurrence or prevalence of these fears in the past week, as determined by a diary method. Results indicated that while these fears ranked high when using the standard FSSC-R procedure, they were considerably less common when using the fear list procedure, and had a low probability of actual occurrence on a daily basis, as well as possessing a short duration and low intensity. Implications for the assessment of fears and the use of self-report measures like the FSSC-R are briefly discussed.

Dutch version of the Pain Vigilance and Awareness Questionnaire: validity and reliability in a pain-free population.

The current study examined validity and reliability of the Pain Vigilance and Awareness Questionnaire (PVAQ) in two samples of healthy college students. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analysis showed that a two-factor model of the PVAQ was most suitable in the present study. The first factor could be referred to as attention to pain whereas the second factor could be specified as attention to changes in pain. With regard to the convergent and divergent validity, the PVAQ was found to correlate highly with related constructs like catastrophising (PCS) and general body vigilance (BVQ). The correlation between PVAQ and pain-related fear (FPQ) was moderate, whereas correlations with unrelated constructs like trait anxiety (STAI-T) and fear of spiders (FSQ) were low. Furthermore, the PVAQ showed good internal consistency and fair test-retest reliability. Altogether, these findings suggest that the PVAQ is a valid and reliable measure of pain vigilance in healthy individuals. The results of this study can be regarded as a starting point for further validation of the PVAQ in clinical pain populations. Implications for future research and treatment interventions are discussed.

The relationship between anxiety sensitivity and fear of pain in healthy adolescents.

The present study investigated the relationship between anxiety sensitivity and fear of pain in a large group of healthy adolescents (N=200). Participants completed the childhood anxiety sensitivity index for children-revised, a questionnaire measuring four specific domains of anxiety sensitivity: fear of cardiovascular symptoms, fear of respiratory symptoms, fear of cognitive dyscontrol, and fear of publicly observable anxiety symptoms, and a simplified version of the pain anxiety symptoms scale, a self-report instrument assessing pain-related anxiety and avoidance (i.e. fear of pain). In line with previous research in adult populations, it was found that anxiety sensitivity is substantially and positively related to fear of pain. Even when controlling for other potential predictors of fear of pain (i.e. pain symptoms, other somatization symptoms, trait anxiety, and panic disorder symptoms), anxiety sensitivity appeared to declare a unique proportion of the variance in pain anxiety symptoms.

The revised version of the Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED-R): treatment sensitivity in an early intervention trial for childhood anxiety disorders.

OBJECTIVES: The revised version of the Screen for Childhood Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED-R) is a recently developed self-report questionnaire for measuring DSM-IV defined anxiety disorder symptoms in children. The current study examined the treatment sensitivity of the SCARED-R. METHODS: Thirty-six children (aged 8-13 years) who fulfilled the criteria for generalized anxiety disorder, separation anxiety disorder, and/or social phobia received either group or individual cognitive-behavioural treatment. Children completed the SCARED-R and a traditional measure of childhood anxiety, the State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children (STAIC), at three points in time: (1) 6 months before treatment (i.e. baseline), (2) pre-treatment, and (3) post-treatment. RESULTS: Results showed that children's SCARED-R and STAIC scores did not change from baseline to pre-treatment, but significantly declined from pre-treatment to post-treatment. An additional finding of the present study was that group and individual CBT were equally effective in reducing children's anxiety symptoms. CONCLUSIONS: It can be concluded that the SCARED-R reliably taps treatment effects and thus should be regarded as a useful self-report index of childhood anxiety in clinical and research settings. Furthermore, the data support the notion that CBT should be generally regarded as an efficacious intervention for anxiety disordered children.

The structure of negative emotions in adolescents.

This study examined the structure of negative emotions in a sample of nonclinical adolescents, using an approach that exclusively relied on child self-report. A large sample of adolescents (N = 968) completed self-report questionnaires measuring symptoms of fear, anxiety, and depression. Confirmatory factor analysis provided support for the notion that fear, anxiety, and depression are distinct yet correlated components of negative emotions. This result is in agreement with recent empirical findings and current theoretical notions on the structure of negative emotions in children and should be taken as an encouragement for researchers to develop more specific measures for assessing fear, anxiety, and depression in children.

Anxiety and depression as correlates of self-reported behavioural inhibition in normal adolescents.

In a previous study, Muris, Merckelbach, Wessel, and Van de Ven [Psychopathological correlates of self-reported behavioural inhibition in normal children. Behav. Res. Ther. 37 (1999) 575-584] found that children who defined themselves as high on behavioural inhibition displayed elevated levels of psychopathological symptoms compared to children who defined themselves as low or middle on behavioural inhibition. The present study further examined the relationship between self-reported behavioural inhibition and anxiety disorders and depression symptoms in a large sample of adolescents aged 12-18 years (N=968). Adolescents completed a measure of behavioural inhibition and questionnaires of anxiety and depression. Results indicated that adolescents who classified themselves as high on behavioural inhibition had higher scores of anxiety and depression than adolescents who classified themselves as low or middle on behavioural inhibition. Structural equations modelling was employed to test hypothetical models on the role of behavioural inhibition in childhood anxiety and depression. It was found that a pathway in which behavioural inhibition results in anxiety, which in turn leads to depression, provided the best fit for the data.

Autobiographical memories become less vivid and emotional after eye movements.

OBJECTIVES: To test (1) whether eye movements during retrieval of emotional memories are followed by less vividness and less emotionality of future recollections, (2) whether this effect, if present, is stronger than the effects of a control activity (finger tapping), (3) whether the alleged effects of tapping and eye movements are stronger than a no-movement, control condition (mere imagery), (4) whether reductions in vividness and emotionality after eye movements (and finger tapping) are specific to negative memories or also occur in the case of positive memories. METHOD: Sixty healthy volunteers recalled either positive or negative memories and scored the vividness and emotionality of the recollections. Next, memories were recalled whilst the participant was performing rapid eye movements, finger tapping, or not performing a dual task. Then participants were asked to recall the event again and to rate its vividness and emotionality. RESULTS: Compared to finger tapping and the no-dual-task condition, recollections after eye movements made future recollections less vivid. After eye movements, but not after the other interventions, negative memories became less negative, and positive memories became less positive. CONCLUSION: The findings show that eye movements not only reduce vividness and emotionality of memories during the eye moving, but also affect future recollections, during which no eye movements are made. Some theoretical explanations are discussed. As to clinical implications, it is suggested that if there is a role for eye-movement-based treatments, it is very limited.

Thought-action fusion and thought suppression in obsessive-compulsive disorder.

To examine the significance of thought-action fusion (TAF) and thought suppression tendencies, the present study obtained pre- and post-treatment questionnaire data on these constructs in a sample of OCD patients (n=24) and non-OCD anxiety patients (n=20). Results indicate that TAF and suppression are correlated with severity of psychopathology. Yet, the associations between TAF and psychopathology are not typical for OCD, but do also occur in other anxiety disorders (e.g., panic disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, and social phobia). As well, mean scores on the TAF and thought suppression measures dropped significantly from pre- to post-treatment, indicating that TAF and thought suppression are susceptible to change during psychotherapy.

Thought-action fusion and anxiety disorders symptoms in normal adolescents.

The present study examined thought-action fusion (TAF) in a large sample of normal adolescents (n=427). Participants completed the Thought-Action Fusion Questionnaire for Adolescents (TAFQ-A) and scales measuring trait anxiety, symptoms of obsessive-compulsive disorder, other anxiety disorders, and depression. Results showed that the TAFQ-A is a reliable instrument assessing two dimensions of TAF, viz. Morality (i.e., the belief that unacceptable thoughts are morally equivalent to overt actions) and Likelihood (i.e., the belief that thinking of an unacceptable or disturbing situation will increase the probability that that situation actually occurs). Furthermore, TAF was not only associated with symptoms of OCD, but also with symptoms of other anxiety disorders and depression. However, when controlling for levels of trait anxiety, most connections between TAF and anxiety disorders symptoms disappeared. Symptoms of OCD and generalised anxiety remained significantly related to TAF. Altogether, the data are supportive of the notion that TAF is involved in a broad range of anxiety disorders and in particular OCD.

Anxiety sensitivity and fear of pain in children.

Associations among scores on scales of anxiety sensitivity and trait anxiety and a fear of pain questionnaire were examined for 118 children. Analysis showed that anxiety sensitivity was positively and substantially related to fear of pain in the children. Furthermore, the data suggested anxiety sensitivity to be a better predictor of fear of pain than trait anxiety.

The thought-action fusion scale: further evidence for its reliability and validity.

Thought-action fusion (TAF) refers to a set of cognitive biases that are thought to play a role in the development of obsessional phenomena. To measure these biases, R. Shafran, D. S. Thordarson, and S. Rachman (1996; Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 10, 379-391) developed the TAF-scale. They concluded that the TAF-scale possesses adequate psychometric qualities. The current study sought to further explore the reliability and validity of the TAF-scale. Results indicate that the TAF-scale has good internal consistency. TAF-scores correlated with self-reports of obsessional problems. Furthermore, mean scores in a mixed sample of anxiety disordered patients were higher than those in a normal sample. However, temporal consistency was somewhat disappointing. Also, the question remains whether TAF is specific to obsessive-compulsive disorder or taps more pervasive biases that play a role in a variety of disorders.

Protective and vulnerability factors of depression in normal adolescents.

The present study investigated the role of various protective and vulnerability factors in the development of depressive symptoms. A sample of normal adolescents (N=373) completed the Children's Depression Inventory and measures of a negative attributional style, parental rearing behaviour, coping styles, and perceived self-efficacy. In addition to computing the correlations between depression and these protective and vulnerability factors, the present data were also subjected to structural equations modelling to examine the correlational structure of the data. Depression was accompanied by high levels of parental rejection, negative attributions, and passive coping, and by low levels of active coping and self-efficacy. Furthermore, a model in which negative parental rearing behaviour and a negative attributional style featured as the primary sources of depression, while coping styles and self-efficacy played a mediating role in the formation of depressive symptoms, provided a reasonable fit for the data.

Effects of an early intervention group program for anxious and depressed adolescents: a pilot study.

The Resourceful Adolescent Program is an early intervention program designed to enhance psychological resilience in adolescents with emotional problems. Eight adolescents with high anxious and/or depressive symptoms were treated with this 11-session group program. Treatment effects were examined by means of self-report questionnaires of anxiety, depression, and self-efficacy. Pre- and postintervention data showed reductions in anxiety and depression scores and a concomitant increase in adolescents' self-efficacy.