Am J Psychiatry 1988; 145:70-74
Copyright © 1988 by American Psychiatric Association
Pedigrees, functioning, and psychopathology in families of school phobic children
GA Bernstein and BD Garfinkel
Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis 55455.
Family pedigrees of six children with severe school phobia compared with
those of a matched group of families of five children with psychiatric
disorders showed a clustering of affective and anxiety disorders. Blind and
independent family histories and structured interviews of parents and
siblings demonstrated higher rates of depressive and anxiety disorders in
first-degree relatives of children with school phobia. Parents of children
with school phobia described more disturbance in family functioning on the
Family Assessment Measure than did parents in the comparison group in the
areas of role performance, communication, affective expression, and
control.
