Anxiety syndromes in childhood and adolescence.

Anxieties are very widespread in children and adolescents, they only rarely to lead to the need for medical care. Physiological anxieties as phenomena dependent on maturity are differentiated from anxiety syndromes typical to age according to the degree of severity or the persistence of the signs and symptoms. Typical forms of age-typical syndromes are fear of separation, childish phobias, anxiety syndromes with shyness, going into one's shell, avoidance behaviour as well as school phobias. These confront the generalized anxiety disorders and the phobias as anxiety syndromes, which occur in children, adolescents and adults. The various anxiety syndromes were discussed in this order, information concerning anxiety symptomatology in the framework of depressive syndromes and other psychiatric illnesses in children and young people are to follow. Besides descriptions of the signs and symptoms, in particular concerning differential diagnosis and ..reflections are described.