Childhood anxiety and phobic disorders: A pragmatic perspective
For many years, anxiety and phobia disorders of childhood and adolescence were ignored by clinicians and researchers alike. They were viewed as largely benign, as problems that were relatively mild, age-specific, and transitory. With time, it was thought, they would simply disappear or "go away"-that the child or adolescent would magically "outgrow" them with development and that they would not adversely affect the growing child or adolescent. As a result of such thinking, it was concluded that these "internalizing" problems were not worthy or deserving of our concerted and careful attention-that other problems of childhood and adolescence and, in particular, "externalizing" problems such as conduct disturbance, oppositional defiance, and attention-deficit problems demanded our profession...