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The Developmental Psychopathology of Anxiety

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Anxiety and Depression in Children and Adolescents

Abstract

Anxiety is one of the basic human emotions (Plutchik, 1980) and is present in all persons at some time, often on a daily basis to some degree. Concerns about taking a test or being late for an appointment often indicate anxiety in everyday life. Anxiety has a well-defined progression that is recognizable in infancy and progresses through childhood as an indicator of developmental progress. Anxiety and fear are related and often are used interchangeably. Arguably, anxiety has been described as reflecting concerns about subjective, anticipatory events, while fear has been considered to be in response to objective threatening events. Gray and McNaughton (2000) suggested that fear is a defensive response to a real threat, while anxiety is a defensive response to a perceived threat. This chapter will focus primarily on anxiety as a subjective experience of future events, although it is well known that children may have fears of specific stimuli, such as large animals, loud sounds, and unfamiliar people.

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  1. Department of Counseling and Educational Psychology School Psychology Program, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, USA

    Thomas J. Huberty

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Huberty, T.J. (2012). The Developmental Psychopathology of Anxiety. In: Anxiety and Depression in Children and Adolescents. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-3110-7_2

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