Family interaction in adolescent school phobia

Abstract

The families of 26 school non‐attending adolescents (15 phobics, 11 truants) took part in a special task interview which was observed and video taped. The Summary Format for Family Interaction and Family Description Form were used to describe the families. Characteristic items were observed more frequently in phobic than truant families. The two items that discriminated statistically between the groups, and could therefore be said to characterize phobic families, involved the index child's behaviour within the family, notably his passivity and lack of initiative, his sadness and appearance of having given up. A number of other items just failed to reach statistical significance. A pattern of interaction in phobic families is suggested and the nature of its relationship with the phobic symptom is discussed. A developmental model is used to explain some of the differences seen in families of adolescents.

Frequency, stability and differentiation of self-reported school fear and truancy in a community sample

“…Given the very limited knowledge about the contribution of life events to school absenteeism, the present finding is noteworthy. It converges with the finding by Huffington and Sevitt [ 13 ] indicating a significant though not specific increase of life events in these subjects. One may speculate that with increasing age adolescents showing some form of school absenteeism become more sensitive to life events and their impact or are at least more reliably reporting their life events.…”

“…Very little is known about the relevance of stressful life events. According to Huffington and Sevitt [ 13 ] there is a tendency for critical life events to occur more frequently among truant pupils rather than school refusers. Furthermore, there is also only a paucity of studies dealing with personality features indicating that school absenteeism is linked to negative self esteem [ 14 , 15 ].…”

Differentiation Between School Attendance Problems: Why and How?

“…For example, suspension is used disproportionately among minority groups (Raffaele Mendez & Knoff, 2003) and those from socio-economically disadvantaged areas (Hemphill et al, 2010). Negative outcomes of disciplinary exclusion include high rates of dropout from school (Arcia, 2006;Johnston, 1989) and involvement with the legal system (Costenbader & Markson, 1998). A recent UK report indicated a bi-directional relationship between disciplinary exclusion (expulsion or suspension) and psychopathology (Ford et al, 2017).…”

Truancy in the United States: Examining temporal trends and correlates by race, age, and gender

“…It is characterized by youths’ intentional, unexcused absence from school (Gentle-Genitty, Karikari, Chen, Wilka, & Kim, 2015) without parent knowledge or consent (e.g., Galloway, 1982; Huffington & Sevitt, 1989). Truancy is differentiated from other types of absenteeism such as school refusal which is characterized by emotional distress associated with school attendance (Heyne et al, in press).…”