Pedigrees, functioning, and psychopathology in families of school phobic children.

Family pedigrees of six children with severe school phobia compared with those of a matched group of families of five children with psychiatric disorders showed a clustering of affective and anxiety disorders. Blind and independent family histories and structured interviews of parents and siblings demonstrated higher rates of depressive and anxiety disorders in first-degree relatives of children with school phobia. Parents of children with school phobia described more disturbance in family functioning on the Family Assessment Measure than did parents in the comparison group in the areas of role performance, communication, affective expression, and control.