The Intergenerational Transmission of Social Phobia

这项研究涉及一种被称为“社交恐惧症”的情绪障碍。患有社交恐惧症的人非常害怕他们会羞辱自己或让自己难堪。大约四分之一的社交恐惧症患者的孩子自己也会患上这种疾病。基因在其中起了一定的作用，但父母的教养可能也很重要。我们一直在研究一组母亲和她们的孩子，从怀孕到孩子两岁。这些母亲要么患有社交恐惧症，另一种形式的焦虑（慢性焦虑），要么从未焦虑过。有社交焦虑的母亲的孩子中有很大一部分表现出社交焦虑的早期迹象。这种焦虑与母亲向孩子展示自己的社交焦虑以及不支持和鼓励孩子与陌生人交往有关。我们现在希望在这些孩子五岁开始上学时对他们进行评估，以了解社交焦虑母亲的孩子如何应对这种情况，以及母亲如何帮助或不帮助他们。众所周知，焦虑父母的焦虑儿童对治疗的反应不如其他焦虑儿童。这项研究将有助于为这些儿童开发新的治疗方法。

The study concerns a form of emotional disturbance known as ‘social phobia’. People who suffer from social phobia intensely fear that they will humiliate or embarrass themselves. About one in four of the children of someone with social phobia develop the disorder themselves. Genetics plays some part in this, but parenting is likely also to be important. We have been studying a group of mothers and their children, from pregnancy until the child was two years old. The mothers either have social phobia, another form of anxiety (chronic worrying), or have never been anxious. A significant proportion of the children of the mothers with social anxiety themselves show early signs of social anxiety. This anxiety is associated with mothers displaying their own social anxiety to their children and not supporting and encouraging their children with strangers. We now wish to assess these children when they start school at age five, to learn how the children of socially anxious mothers cope with this situation and how the mothers do or do not help them. It is known that anxious children of anxious parents do not respond to treatment as well as other anxious children. This study will contribute to the development of new treatments for these children.