Identification of high-risk behaviors among victimized adolescents and implications for empirically supported psychosocial treatment.

An adolescent's possible response to being the victim of interpersonal violence is not limited to posttraumatic stress disorder and depression but may also involve a host of developmental effects, including the occurrence of high-risk behaviors that may have a significant and negative impact on the adolescent's psychological and physical health. Identifying such high-risk behaviors, understanding their possible link to a previous victimization incident, and implementing interventions that have been demonstrated to reduce such behaviors may help decrease potential reciprocal interactions between these areas. Clinicians in psychiatric practice may be in a unique position to make these connections, since parents of adolescents may perceive a greater need for mental health services for youth engaging in problematic externalizing behaviors than for those displaying internalizing symptoms. In this article, the authors first describe high-risk behaviors, including substance use, delinquent behavior, risky sexual behaviors, and self-injurious behaviors, that have been linked with experiencing interpersonal violence. They then review empirically based treatments that have been indicated to treat these deleterious behaviors in order to help clinicians select appropriate psychosocial interventions for this population. Recommendations for future research on the treatment of high-risk behaviors in adolescents are also presented.

Cognitive-behavioral treatment for panic disorder: current status.

Is cognitive behavioral treatment (CBT) appropriate for panic disorder with or without agoraphobia (PDA) in children, adolescents, and adults? Are its effects durable? In this review, we survey various psychological approaches to the treatment of PDA and examine the relative efficacy and clinical utility of each. A growing body of research demonstrates that CBT is well-tolerated, cost-effective, and produces substantial treatment gains for individuals with PDA over the short- and long-term. Nevertheless, not everyone benefits and there is room for improvement among those who do. We address these shortcomings and consider recent developments.

Self-efficacy: a comparison between clinically anxious and non-referred youth.

Although diminished self-efficacy has been linked to childhood psychopathology, including depression, it has only recently been studied in relation to childhood anxiety disorders. This study examines the relationship between self-efficacy and self-reported anxiety in children who have been referred for an assessment and possible treatment of anxiety symptoms as well as a comparison group of non-referred children. A self-efficacy questionnaire for children and a childhood anxiety measure were administered to a group of children referred for assessment and treatment of a clinical anxiety disorder (n = 50) and a non-referred control group (n = 50). Results indicate that the two samples differed significantly on measures of emotional self-efficacy, but not in terms of self-reported anxiety or other self-efficacy domains. Potential explanations for observed findings are discussed, including the possibility that self-reports of emotional self-efficacy in children may vary by clinical or referral status, amongst those reporting higher levels of anxiety overall.