Anxiety
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Social Fears in Children: The Roles of Parental Communication and Child Temperament
A recent longitudinal study by Zeytinoglu and colleagues (2025) provides insights into how parental verbal communication and child characteristics contribute to the transmission of social fears. The study shows the impact of both positive and negative maternal statements about ambiguous social situations, finding that positive comments were linked to reductions in children’s social fear beliefs, while negative comments predicted increases, especially among children who were behaviourally inhibited or had high anxiety.
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Professor Stephan Collishaw
Professor Stephan Collishaw serves as co-director for the Wolfson Centre for Young People’s Mental Health and Professor in the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Section in the Division of Psychological Medicine and Clinical Neurosciences at Cardiff University.
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JCPP Advances 2023 Special Issue – ‘Evidence-based Synthesis Studies for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Conditions’
September sees the release of the JCPP Advances 2023 Special Issue on ‘Evidence-based Synthesis Studies for Child and Adolescent Mental Health Conditions’, edited by Professor Henrik Larsson, Dr. Marco Solmi, Professor Guilherme Polanczyk, Professor Seena Fazel, Dr. Cinzia Del Giovane and Dr. Ioana Cristea.
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Anxiety – Increasing Understanding and Improving Awareness
Celebrating its twelfth year, Mental Health Awareness Week has chosen to focus on ‘Anxiety’ – to increase public understanding of anxiety and improve awareness of the impact it can have on lives. Everyone, in some shape or form, experiences anxiety. However, anxiety can become overwhelming and, in some cases, can evolve into an anxiety disorder.
This Mental Health Awareness Week (15 to 21 May 2023), we encourage you to explore the FREE learning opportunities available on our website, and to share with your networks, to increase people’s awareness and understanding of the impact of anxiety on children and young people.
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Mental Health in schools: learning lessons from the past
Whilst the pandemic may be a contributory factor, the increase in mental health problems from one in eight to one in six between 2017 and today is alarming and needs addressing urgently. Unfortunately, it seems that recent changes in education have impacted negatively YP emotional wellbeing.
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Finding strength from a bleak year
Professor Andrea Danese explains about the KeepCool project.
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‘Cool Little Kids’ helps reduce later anxiety symptoms but not broader internalising problems
Children with a shy/inhibited temperament are at risk of developing internalising problems later in life.1 Unfortunately, the responses to such behaviours by some parents — such as overprotective or harsh parenting — can add to this risk.
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Cognitive inflexibility contributes to both externalising and internalising difficulties in ASD
Children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) commonly experience internalising and externalising symptoms, but the underlying cognitive mechanisms are unclear. In their latest study published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, Ann Ozsivadjian and colleagues examined the role of three cognitive factors that might contribute to these difficulties.
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Do children with social anxiety disorder benefit from social skills training?
Social anxiety disorder (SAD) in children can be difficult to treat, as evidenced by the varied outcomes reported post-treatment.1,2 Although childhood treatments for SAD commonly involve at least some social skills training,3 it isn’t clear whether children with SAD have particular difficulties with social skills. There is therefore a need to better establish whether social skills are an effective target for treating SAD.
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Consistency is needed when measuring and reporting outcomes in child and adolescent anxiety disorders trials
This year, Cathy Creswell, Maaike Nauta and colleagues from around the world convened a series of international activities based around measuring and reporting in treatment trials for child and adolescent anxiety disorders.
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