The aim of the present thesis was to explore wether parental psychopathology and threat-related selective attention were related to outcome of cognitive-behavioral therapy in anxiety-disordered children and adolescents. Pre- to post-treatment changes of selective attention were also examined in relation to treatment success. The second aim was to examine whether cognitive coping after the experience of negative life events is related to anxiety disorders in children and adolescents

Legerstee, J.S. (Jeroen)

Erasmus University Digital Repository

Stellingen behorend bij het proefschrift  Toward an Optimal Treatment for Childhood Anxiety Disorders:  The influence of parental psychopathology, selective attention, and cognitive coping  Jeroen S. Legerstee   1. Lifetime maternal anxiety disorders are associated with favorable treatment responses in adolescents with an anxiety disorder.  This thesis  2. Anxiety-disordered children with selective attention away from severe threat profit more from CBT than children with selective attention toward severe threat or without any selective attention for severely threatening stimuli. This thesis  3. Treatment responders to CBT show a reduction of their threat-related selective attention, while treatment nonresponders do not show any changes in their attentional processing for threatening information.  This thesis  4. Children with an anxiety disorder experience more negative life events, and use more maladaptive and less adaptive strategies to cognitively cope with these life events, than non-anxious children.  This thesis   5. Adolescents with an anxiety disorder experience more negative life events, and make more use of both maladaptive as well as adaptive cognitive coping strategies in response to these events, than non-anxious adolescents. This thesis   6. Currently anxious parents should be treated first, before their parenting practices are targeted and they are actively involved in (family-based) interventions for their anxious child.   7. Threat-related selective attention is an underlying mechanism in the development and maintenance of anxiety disorders.   8. CBT should contain additional standardized treatment modules attuned to the specific characteristics of an anxious child and its environment.   9. The lack of a specific longitudinal course, the nonspecific familial aggregation, high comorbidity, and genetic overlap question the diagnostic validity of anxiety disorder subtypes, in particular phobias.   10. Before someone starts to combine a PhD study with patient care, he or she first should be tested on the ability to control and switch attention.  11. “The important thing is not to stop questioning. Curiosity has its own reason for existing” (Albert Einstein).   

Toward an Optimal Treatment for Childhood Anxiety Disorders: The Influence of Parental Psychopathology, Selective Attention, and Cognitive Coping

Legerstee, Jeroen

EUR Research Repository

English