The Youth Anxiety Measure for DSM-5 (YAM-5):Development and First Psychometric Evidence of a New Scale for Assessing Anxiety Disorders Symptoms of Children and Adolescents

The Youth Anxiety Measure for DSM-5 (YAM-5) is a new self- and parent-report questionnaire to assess anxiety disorder symptoms in children and adolescents in terms of the contemporary classification system. International panels of childhood anxiety researchers and clinicians were used to construct a scale consisting of two parts: part one consists of 28 items and measures the major anxiety disorders including separation anxiety disorder, selective mutism, social anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder, whereas part two contains 22 items that focus on specific phobias and (given its overlap with situational phobias) agoraphobia. In general, the face validity of the new scale was good; most of its items were successfully linked to the intended anxiety disorders. Notable exceptions were the selective mutism items, which were frequently considered as symptoms of social anxiety disorder, and some specific phobia items especially of the natural environment, situational and other type, that were regularly assigned to an incorrect category. A preliminary investigation of the YAM-5 in non-clinical (N = 132) and clinically referred (N = 64) children and adolescents indicated that the measure was easy to complete by youngsters. In addition, support was found for the psychometric qualities of the measure: that is, the internal consistency was good for both parts, as well as for most of the subscales, the parent-child agreement appeared satisfactory, and there was also evidence for the validity of the scale. The YAM-5 holds promise as a tool for assessing anxiety disorder symptoms in children and adolescents

The Importance of Baseline Word Reading Skills in Examining Student Response to a Multicomponent Reading Intervention

To address the needs of a diverse group of students with reading difficulties, a majority of researchers over the last decade have designed and implemented multicomponent reading interventions (MCRIs) that provide instruction in multiple areas of reading yielding mixed results. The current study evaluates whether students’ baseline word reading skills predict their response to a MCRI. Data from a randomized controlled trial for third- and fourth-grade students with reading difficulties (N = 128) were analyzed. Results demonstrate that baseline word reading was a significant predictor of students’ end-of-year reading comprehension performance. Treatment group students who had lower baseline word reading compared with those students with comparatively higher word reading scores performed significantly lower on posttest reading comprehension. Findings denote the importance of word reading instruction for upper elementary students who are below-average word readers and also indicate the need for tailoring reading intervention to align with individual reader needs

PTSD Near and Far: Symptom Networks from Two to 12 Months after the Virginia Tech Campus Shootings

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is unique in its longitudinal focus. To better understand how PTSD develops, we used network analysis in a longitudinal sample of survivors of the 2007 Virginia Tech campus shootings. Participants were 212 women who completed surveys at both two and 12 months post-shooting. Using within-group permutation tests, we found that overall network strength significantly increased and overall network structure significantly changed. Several symptoms saw marked alterations in their network centrality and relations to other symptoms. Psychological reactivity at reminders was the most central symptom at two months but among the least central at 12 months. By contrast, reliving, anhedonia, and physiological reactivity had low centrality at two months but high centrality at 12 months. Findings broadly support memory-based and fear conditioning accounts of PTSD and suggest that automatic situationally-cued symptoms, including reliving, thought avoidance, and physiological reactions, become more central to the network over time

The psychological impact from hurricane Katrina: effects of displacement and trauma exposure on university students

The following study examined the reactions of university students to Hurricane Katrina. A group of 68 New Orleans area students who were displaced from their home universities as a result of the hurricane were matched on race, gender, and age to a sample of 68 students who had been enrolled at Louisiana State University (LSU) prior to the hurricane. All students were enrolled at LSU at the time they participated in an online survey, conducted 3 months following the hurricane. The survey included symptom measures of depression, anxiety, stress, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and other variables. Results indicated displaced students experienced more trauma exposure and greater subsequent distress, more symptoms of PTSD, and more symptoms of depression. Moreover, traumatic exposure and distress from the traumatic exposure were found to fully mediate depressive symptoms and posttraumatic symptoms in the displaced students