Anxiety disorders

  • Autism Spectrum Disorders and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder edition

    This edition of ‘The Bridge’ focusses on Autism Spectrum Disorders and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder. Both of these can resemble each other with the over-focus, special interests and anxieties seen in ASD resembling the obsessions of OCD, and the routines, rituals and need for order and sameness that can be seen in ASD resembling the compulsions in OCD.

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  • Young people’s lived experience of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

    How do young people really experience living with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)? What are young people’s understanding of their development of OCD and is there a link to trauma? How do other people’s reactions to the OCD affect the young people? How do young people really feel about the help for OCD in the United Kingdom?

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  • Working memory deficits may compromise cognitive flexibility in OCD

    Obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) is characterised by recurrent intrusive thoughts and/or behaviours. These traits imply deficits in cognitive flexibility in affected patients, but it is unclear at what stage of information processing these deficits might emerge. To address this question, Nicole Wolff and colleagues asked 25 adolescents with OCD and 25 matched healthy controls to complete a computer-based task switching paradigm.

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  • Cognitive flexibility in OCD: challenging the paradigm

    Data from a new study by Nicole Wolff and colleagues suggest that cognitive flexibility can be better in children with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) than typically developing controls.

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  • Cognitive flexibility in OCD: challenging the paradigm

    Data from a new study by Nicole Wolff and colleagues suggest that cognitive flexibility can be better in children with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) than typically developing controls.

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  • Comorbid anxiety disorder has a protective effect in conduct disorder

    The presence of comorbid anxiety disorders (ADs) counteracts the effects of conduct disorder (CD) on facial emotion recognition, according to new research by Roxana Short and colleagues.

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  • Child anxiety could be factor in school absences, research concludes

    New research has concluded that anxiety can be a factor in poor school attendance among children and young people.

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  • Sleep problems in preschoolers predict depression and anxiety severity

    The bidirectional links between sleep problems and psychopathology in children have been well-reviewed,1 but few investigations have been performed in young samples and those with early-onset psychopathology.

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  • Anxiety Edition – foreword by Dr Mark Lovell

    This edition of The Bridge covers the topic of anxiety. Owing to anxiety being common, with all of us experiencing a state of anxiety at some time and many also having trait anxiety, it is no surprise that ACAMH’s two main academic outputs the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Child and Adolescent Mental Health contain some good quality research on anxiety advancing our knowledge of the science and evidence based practice.

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  • Adult ABMT protocols need adapting for effective use in children

    Attention bias modification treatment (ABMT) aims to target attention biases in threat processing in patients with anxiety1. While ABMT seems to be effective in adults with social anxiety disorder (SAD),2,3 its effect in youths with SAD and the potential treatment moderators are unclear. In 2016, Lee Pergamin-Hight and colleagues conducted a randomised controlled trial to explore the efficacy of ABMT in youths and the influence of possible moderators of treatment outcomes.

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