Pharmacotherapy for children and adolescents with anxiety disorders

Anxiety disorders are the most common type of psychopathology during development, affecting up to 20% of children and adolescents during a 12-month period. They constitute a heterogeneous group of conditions, including separation anxiety disorder (SAD), generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), social phobia (SP), specific phobias, panic disorder (PD), posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Although these conditions are all part of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fourth edition (DSM-IV) category of anxiety disorders, there are substantial differences, in addition to similarities, among them. In particular, although SAD, GAD, and SP have a high level of symptom overlap, tend to coexist in the same patients and have often been studied conjunctly, OCD, PTSD, and PD are quite distinct entities, which have been the object of separate, specifically targeted investigations.