Psychometric Properties of SCARED-C Scale in a Romanian Community Sample and its Future Utility for Dental Practice

SCARED-C instrument (the child version, 41 items) is used for screening anxiety in children between 8 to 18 years old and has been first introduced by Birmaher & collab. in 1995, with good psychometric data - internal consistency from α =.74 to .93 - and good discriminative validity indices in the original versions (1997, 1999). Since then, many countries have adopted the scale, for its utility in identifying five subsets of anxiety disorders (subscales): somatic/panic disorder, generalized anxiety, separation anxiety, social phobia, and school avoidance. The present study contains the first Romanian translated and adapted version of the SCARED-C instrument on a community sample of 477 children (8-18 years old) from Mureș county schools. The instrument showed moderate to good internal consistency (α Cronbach from to .63 to .91 for the total scale) and good test-retest reliability (.70) on a subset of 85 children sample. A confirmatory factorial analysis (CFA) was conducted to test the factor structure of the Romanian version of SCARED-C; results showed that SCARED-C has good psychometric properties to be used for screening anxiety in Romanian children and adolescents. The implications for using SCARED-C in dental practice are discussed. Future studies need to be conducted for exploring convergent and discriminative validity of the instrument and the sensitivity to current DSM-V criteria. Application on a dental pediatric sample is also required.

Empirical study of suicide intentions of adolescents

The article analyzes the features of suicidal ideation of adolescents. The phenomenon of suicide as a human behavior aimed at intentional self-harm with a fatal end, self-destruction is considered. The general signs of suicidal intent are analyzed: verbal signs (notification of one's intention to others); behavioral signs (significant changes in behavior: larger indifference on their appearance, disruption of the attention process, missing school, avoidance of communication with peers); situational signs (betraying their legacy, cowardice or excessive aggression, clash with important people, disruption of relationship). As a result of empirical research, it was found that the studied adolescents are characterized by a mostly low level of anxiety, which is an indicator of the stability of the emotional state and lack of anxiety; low and medium level of frustration, and adolescents are confident, responsible, resistant to failure, are not afraid of difficulties; adolescents have an average rate of aggression, which is characterized by coming into student’s conflicts, to prove their point, using elements of aggression to assert themselves and maintain their status in the peer group; the average indicator of rigidity testifies to their stability in the actions provoked by unforeseen events; found that some adolescents clearly expressed the dominance of emotions over intellectual control in assessing the situation, readiness to respond to a traumatic situation rather emotionally than logically, existing social pessimism as a negative concept of the world, also, they are characterized by demonstrativeness (demonstration of suicidal intentions) of the willingness to attract public attention of others to themselves, their problems, to achieve compassion and awareness. It is concluded that it is necessary to develop a system of socio-psychological measures to reduce suicidal ideation among adolescents.

Low self-esteem

Most children with ADHD suffer from low self-esteem. Many unwanted behaviours that are seen in children with ADHD are due to problems with self-esteem. It is essential that parents and teachers recognize this before trying to treat the behaviour. This chapter discusses low self-esteem in ADHD, including self-appraisal as a function of the brain, control of the self-appraisal system in the brain, dysfunctional coping behaviours (quitting, avoiding, adverse responses to praise, tactile defensiveness, cheating, lying, clowning, regressive behaviour, school avoidance, homework avoidance, computer game and TV ‘addiction’, aggression, controlling behaviour, passive aggression, and denial), and the importance of self-esteem maintenance mechanisms.

The Role of Social Media Use in Peer Bullying Victimization and Onset of Anxiety Among Indonesian Elementary School Children

Objectives: This study explored a multidimensional model of the relationships between social media use, gender, peer bullying victimization experiences, and the onset of anxiety symptoms among children. We hypothesized that greater experience of bullying would be associated with greater onset of anxiety. We also expected that gender and social media use (specifically Instagram and YouTube) would be linked with anxiety among elementary school children. To test this hypothesis, a structural equation modeling approach was used.Methods: A total of 456 elementary children aged 11–13 years from nine schools were recruited for this research. We used two psychological measures: The Screen for Child Anxiety Related Emotional Disorders (SCARED) and the Personal Experience Checklist (PECK) as well as a sociodemographic questionnaire (general demographic information and social media-related information).Results: The social media usage survey found that all participants (100%) used social media. Instagram (52.42%) and YouTube (47.58%) were the platforms most used by the participants. The Structural Equation Model results suggest that bullying victimization and gender predicted the onset of anxiety in elementary school children. The model explained 32.1% of the variance of the outcome with very adequate fit indicators based on most indices, χ2 = 173.56, df = 52, p < 0.001; CFI = 0.92; TLI = 0.94; RMSEA = 0.07 (90% CI: 0.06–0.08). Instagram use was correlated positively with generalized anxiety disorder. Gender was negatively correlated with Instagram use and positively correlated with YouTube use. Girls were found to use Instagram more and boys were found to use YouTube more. It was also found that girls had higher scores onSCARED dimensions, except for school avoidance. Girls were more prone to onset of anxiety than boys, except for school avoidance, which was not related to gender. Boys were found to experience significantly more physical bullying than girls. On the other hand, girls were found to experience more panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, separation anxiety disorder, and social anxiety than boys.Conclusion: This study found that bullying victimization significantly influences the onset of anxiety in children. Particular attention should be paid to cyberbullying in this context. This study also found a link between gender and anxiety—girls had a greater tendency to experience the onset of various types of anxiety, including panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, separation anxiety disorder, and social anxiety. Gender was also correlated with the form of bullying victimization. The findings of this study suggest that boys were more likely to experience physical bullying than girls. Interestingly, we found that Instagram use was significantly correlated with developing separation anxiety. In particular, children demonstrated school avoidance when experiencing cyberbullying. Limitations and future directions are discussed.