Are Anxiety Disorders in Children and Adolescents Less Impairing Than ADHD and Autism Spectrum Disorders? Associations with Child Quality of Life and Parental Stress and Psychopathology.
We compared clinically referred children with anxiety disorders (AD; n = 63) to children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD; n = 39), ADHD Combined (ADHD-C; n = 62), ADHD Predominantly Inattentive (ADHD-I; n = 64), and typically developing children (n = 42) on child quality of life (QOL), paternal and maternal psychopathology and parental stress. Diagnoses were based on DSM-IV-TR criteria. Multilevel analyses showed that QOL in AD was higher on school and social functioning, compared to respectively ADHD and ASD, and lower compared to normal controls on all five domains. Fathers reported their AD children higher QOL than mothers. Also, AD appeared to be associated with less parental stress and parental psychopathology than other child psychopathology. Therefore, parental factors may need to be considered more in treatment of children with ADHD/ASD than AD.
Research Priority Area Yield, Research Institute of Child Development and Education, University of Amsterdam, Postbus 15780, 1001 NG, Amsterdam, The Netherlands. g.e.telman@uva.nl.
Liesbeth G E
LGE
Telman
Research Priority Area Yield, Research Institute of Child Development and Education, University of Amsterdam, Postbus 15780, 1001 NG, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.|UvA minds, Academic Outpatient Child and Adolescent Treatment Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Francisca J A
FJA
van Steensel
Department of Developmental Psychology, University of Amsterdam, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Marija
M
Maric
Research Priority Area Yield, Research Institute of Child Development and Education, University of Amsterdam, Postbus 15780, 1001 NG, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.|UvA minds, Academic Outpatient Child and Adolescent Treatment Center, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Susan M
SM
Bögels
D000293:Adolescent; D001008:Anxiety Disorders / Q000523:psychology*; D001289:Attention Deficit Disorder with Hyperactivity / Q000523:psychology*; D000067877:Autism Spectrum Disorder / Q000523:psychology*; D016022:Case-Control Studies; D002648:Child; D039721:Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D055361:Multilevel Analysis; D010290:Parents / Q000523:psychology*; D011788:Quality of Life; D012917:Social Adjustment; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000523:psychology*
Anxiety disorders; Parental psychopathology; Parental stress; Quality of life