[Anxiety disorders in children and adolescents. Epidemiology, risk factors and intervention]

The article reviews the literature on anxiety disorders in children and adolescents. Anxiety disorders represent one of the most common disorders in children and adolescents, with a life-time prevalence of about 10%. In most studies, significantly more females than males met the diagnosis of anxiety disorders. Some factors that have been commonly found to be associated with anxiety disorders include parental psychopathology, familial dysfunction, negative life events, and behavioral inhibition. Anxiety co-occurs frequently with other disorders; it has a chronic course and most of the anxiety cases are psychosocially impaired in various areas of life. The article ends by giving an overview of various types of intervention strategies commonly used to treat children and adolescents with anxiety disorders.