• Supernatural fears and anxieties are widespread. understudied. Many supernatural variations on biologically prepared fears. The study of has significant clinical implications. fears, although common, not as well-understood natural phobias (e.g., social, blood, animal phobias) which by evolution, such that they easily acquired through direct experience relatively immune to cognitive mediation....

Objective: To distinguish normative fears from problematic fears and phobias. Methods: We investigated 2,512 children and adolescents from a large community school-based study, the High Risk Study for Psychiatric Disorders. Parent reports of 18 fears and psychiatric diagnosis were investigated. We used two analytical approaches: confirmatory factor analysis (CFA)/item response theory (IRT) an...

Social anxiety disorder is one of the most common mental disorders, and is associated with long term impairment, distress and vulnerability to secondary disorders. Certain types of social fears are more common than others, with public speaking fears typically the most prevalent in epidemiological surveys. The distinction between performance- and interaction-based fears has been the focus of lon...

Using the 2009 Swine Flu outbreak as a contemporary example of pandemic fears, this study examined the relationship between various symptoms related to anxiety sensitivity and Swine Flu fears. It was hypothesized that both obsessive–compulsive (OC) beliefs and OC symptoms would significantly predict Swine Flu fears. It was also hypothesized that symptoms of anxiety, including measures of anxiet...

Objective: the present study examined the clinical status of common childhood fears. Method: fears of the 290 children aged 8 to 13 years were assessed and then their severity was explored by means of a structured diagnostic interview measuring anxiety disorders according to the criteria of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). Results: childhood fears re ̄ect signi®ca...

Nighttime fears are very common in preschool years. During these years, children's fantasy-reality differentiation undergoes significant development. Our study was aimed at exploring the links between nighttime fears and fantasy-reality differentiation in preschool children. Eighty children (aged: 4-6 years) suffering from severe nighttime fears were compared with 32 non-fearful controls. Fears...