ABSTRACT
Until recently panic attacks and panic disorder were considered primarily problems of adults populations. During, the first decade of active research regarding panic disorder spanning the 1980s there was very little published about panic in children and adolescents. In the early 1990s there was debate about the existence of panic in children. In particular, Nelles and Barlow (1988) challenged the concept that children could experience the catastrophic cognitions necessary to experience panic attacks. Klein (1995) further argued that in adults with panic disorder, retrospective recall of childhood spontaneous panic attacks was extremely rare. These pivotal publications cast doubt on the validity of panic phenomenology in children. As recently as 1990 there were only a handful of case reports describing panic attacks and panic disorder in children and adolescents (Alessi and Magen, 1988; Alessi et al., 1987; Ballenger et al., 1989; Black and Robbins, 1990; Moreau et al., 1989; Van Winters and Strickler, 1984; Vitiello et al., 1987, 1990). There were 2 population-based studies estimating the prevalence of panic attacks in high school-aged adolescents (Hayward et al., 1989; Warren and Zgourides, 1988) and no studies assessing the prevalence of panic in children and younger adolescents. In the 1990s there was an increase interest in panic in children and adolescents. It is now evident that panic attacks and panic disorder do occur in children, although they probably are quite rare (Ollendick et al., 1994) During adolescence, perhaps at puberty, panic attacks become more common (Hayward et al., 1992), although panic disorder is still rare (Essau et al., 1999). This chapter will review the diagnosis, epidemiology, risk factors, assessment, impairment and service utilization, and treatment related to panic attacks and panic disorder in children and adolescents.
