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Generalised Anxiety Disorder

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Handbook of DSM-5 Disorders in Children and Adolescents

Abstract

Excessive, uncontrollable worry represents the core diagnostic criteria of generalised anxiety disorder (GAD). Youth meeting criteria typically worry about many areas of life, report physical symptoms associated with worry and as a result experience significant distress, impairment and disability. This chapter presents a review of the diagnostic history of GAD as it relates to changes across revisions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual (DSM); it then reviews the available research on the symptom presentation, aetiology, epidemiology, comorbidity and impairment of GAD in childhood and adolescents, with a particular focus on the developmental considerations relevant to this age group. The chapter concludes with a description of available treatments and reviews their efficacy in youth. While the focus is on providing a review of GAD in childhood and adolescents, at times, research on overanxious disorder (OAD), the earlier diagnostic form of GAD in childhood, and research on GAD in adults will be drawn on where limited research is available on youth.

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  1. Centre for Emotional Health, Department of Psychology, Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia

    Lauren F. McLellan & Jennifer L. Hudson

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  1. Lauren F. McLellan
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    Sam Goldstein

  2. Intermountain Healthcare, Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

    Melissa DeVries

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McLellan, L.F., Hudson, J.L. (2017). Generalised Anxiety Disorder. In: Goldstein, S., DeVries, M. (eds) Handbook of DSM-5 Disorders in Children and Adolescents. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-57196-6_9

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