Citation

Joiner TE, Schmidt NB, Schmidt KL, Laurent J, Catanzaro SJ, Perez M, Pettit JW. J. Abnorm. Child Psychol. 2002; 30(2): 167-175.

Affiliation

Department of Psychology, Florida State University, Tallahassee 32306-1270, USA. joiner@psy.fsu.edu

Copyright

(Copyright © 2002, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

12008656

Abstract

We addressed several questions regarding the relation of anxiety sensitivity to anxious symptoms among 47 youth psychiatric inpatients (18 boys, 29 girls), ages 9-17 (M = 14.23, SD = 1.89). Participants completed measures of anxiety sensitivity, anxious and depressive symptoms, trait anxiety, and positive and negative affect; chart diagnoses were available. Consistent with hypotheses, we found that (a) anxiety sensitivity was associated with anxious symptoms, even controlling for trait anxiety and depressive symptoms; and (b) anxiety sensitivity displayed symptom specificity to anxious versus depressive symptoms (i.e., was associated with anxiety controlling for depression but not with depression controlling for anxiety). Furthermore, regarding factors of anxiety sensitivity, we obtained mixed support for our prediction that phrenophobia would be associated with both depression and anxiety, whereas fear of physical arousal would be associated with anxiety but not depression. Implications for the construct validity of anxiety sensitivity were discussed.

Language: en