Am J Psychiatry 1992; 149:475-481
Copyright © 1992 by American Psychiatric Association
Comorbidity of parental anxiety disorders as risk for childhood-onset anxiety in inhibited children
JF Rosenbaum, J Biederman, EA Bolduc, DR Hirshfeld, SV Faraone and J Kagan
Clinical Psychopharmacology Unit, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, MA 02114.
OBJECTIVE: Previous work suggested that children of parents with panic
disorder and agoraphobia were likely to be classified as behaviorally
inhibited and that behaviorally inhibited children were likely to develop
anxiety disorders. However, the factors determining which inhibited
children were at risk for childhood onset of anxiety disorders remained
unknown. The authors of this study hypothesized that greater anxiety
loading in parents would increase the risk for anxiety disorders in
children with behavioral inhibition. METHOD: Using DSM-III structured
interviews, the authors examined patterns of aggregation of anxiety
disorders in parents of two existing cohorts of children, one
cross-sectional and clinically derived (31 children, 60 parents) and the
other epidemiologically derived and longitudinal (40 children, 75 parents).
Within each cohort, parents were stratified into three groups based on the
presence (behavioral inhibition and anxiety) or absence (behavioral
inhibition only, no behavioral inhibition and no anxiety) of behavioral
inhibition and two or more anxiety disorders in their child. RESULTS:
Parents of children with behavioral inhibition and anxiety, from both the
clinical and nonclinical cohorts, had significantly higher rates of two or
more anxiety disorders than did parents of children with behavioral
inhibition only and parents of children with no behavioral inhibition and
no anxiety. CONCLUSIONS: These results indicate that the presence of
parental loading for anxiety disorders may help to identify the subgroup of
inhibited children at very high risk for developing childhood-onset anxiety
disorders.
