For many years, anxiety and phobie disorders ofchildhoodand adolescence
were ignored by clinicians and researchers alike. They were viewed as
largely benign, as problems that were relatively mild, age-specific, and
transitory. With time, it was thought, they would simply disappear or
"go away"-that the child or adolescent would magically "outgrow" them
with development and that they would not adversely affect the growing
child or adolescent. As a result ofsuch thinking, it was concluded that
these "internalizing" problems were not worthy or deserving of our
concerted and careful attention-that other problems of childhood and
adolescence and, in particular, "externalizing" problems such as conduct
disturbance, oppositional defiance, and attention-deficit problems de-
manded our professional energies and resources. These assumptions and
asser- tions have been challenged vigorously in recent years. Scholarly
books (King, Hamilton, & Ollendick, 1988; Morris & Kratochwill, 1983)
have documented the considerable distress and misery associated with
these disorders, while reviews ofthe literature have demonstrated that
these disorders are anything but transitory; for a significant number of
youth these problems persist into late adolescence and adulthood
(Ollendick & King, 1994). Clearly, such findings signal the need for
treatment programs that "work"--programs that are effective in the short
term and efficacious over the long haul, producing effects that are
durable and generalizable, as weil as effects that enhance the life
functioning of children and adolescents and the families that evince
such problems.
