Listening to our clinical partners: informing researchers about children's fears and phobias.

We surveyed a national sample of clinical psychologists to expand on Graziano and De Giovanni's (Behaviour Research and Therapy, 1979, 17, 161-162) findings that 6.8% of clinically referred children present with problems with fears and/or phobias. The survey was also conducted to assess how clinicians could inform researchers about current needs for investigations in this area. Questions involved epidemiological, demographical, and treatment characteristics of cases recently seen by therapists. The percentage of referred cases for fears/phobias in children was determined to be similar over time. In addition, types of fears, length of history of fear, intensity of fear, length of treatment, types of treatments used, and degree of parental involvement were measured and reported. The results were found to suggest a substantial degree of heterogeneity among types of fears and treatment methods for this population, as well as important lines of future research. They also suggest the need for controlled studies to assess the efficacy of a number of widely used treatments that lack an empirical base.