Risk for anxiety and implications for treatment: developmental, environmental, and genetic factors governing fear regulation.

ABSTRACT: Anxiety disorders are the most common psychiatric disorders, affecting as many as 10% of youth, with diagnoses peaking during adolescence. A core component of these disorders is an unremitting fear in the absence of present threat. One of the most commonly used therapies to treat these disorders is exposure-based cognitive behavioral therapy that identifies the source of the fear and anxiety and then desensitizes the individual to it. This treatment builds on basic principles of fear-extinction learning. A number of patients improve with this therapy, but 40-50% do not. This paper provides an overview of recent empirical studies employing both human imaging and cross-species behavioral genetics to examine how fear regulation varies across individuals and across development, especially duri

SUBMITTER: Hartley CA 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC3843997 | biostudies-literature | 2013 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature