Anxiety in children with CFS/ME, 2009, Crawley, Hunt and Stallard

Anxiety symptoms are commonly described in children with chronic fatigue syndrome or myalgic encephalopathy (CFS/ME) but to date there has been little information on the type of anxiety children experience or the relationship between anxiety and school attendance, disability or fatigue.

The aim of this study was to first describe the prevalence and type of anxiety symptoms in children with CFS/ME compared with a normal European population, and secondly to investigate the association of anxiety symptoms with age, gender, school attendance, fatigue, and physical function in paediatric CFS/ME. Data were prospectively collected on children and young people with CFS/ME referred to a large specialist CFS/ME service.

One hundred and sixty-four children with CFS/ME had complete data for the Spence Children’s Anxiety Scale. Teenage girls had the highest rates of total anxiety symptoms with 38% (95% CI 27–49) over the cut off (top 10% of normal European population) and significantly higher rates of symptoms in each subscale. Younger girls were more likely to score over the cut off in separation anxiety (37%, 19–40) and social phobia (39%, 25–47). There was no evidence of association between total anxiety symptoms and: time at school, time to assessment, pain or age. Associations with fatigue and physical function were attenuated when adjusted for other variables. Although anxiety symptoms are high in CFS/ME, particularly in teenage girls, it does not appear to be associated with school attendance or other measures of disability. Separation anxiety and social phobia were the most clearly elevated in paediatric CFS/ME.

Paywall, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00787-009-0029-4

 

Correction to: Anxiety in children with CFS/ME, 2023

Following a report of a publications review jointly commissioned by the Health Research Authority and the University of Bristol, the authors would like to correct the following element of the ethics statement provided in the original article (1):

The North Somerset & Bristol Research Ethics Committee decided that the original collection and analysis of this data were service evaluation and as such did not require ethical review by an NHS research ethics committee or approval from the NHS R&D Office (07 /Q2006/48). In a letter dated 29 January 2007, the Chair of the Research Ethics Committee had previously confirmed (a) that it would not be necessary to apply for ethical permission to use the data being collected as part of service evaluation for the national CFS/ME collaborative and (b) that if in future this data were to be used as part of a research project, this would be agreeable.

https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00787-023-02224-6

@dave30th

 

That's a service evaluation. Right. Not even pretending to care about what words mean.