Parental Contributions to Child Anxiety Sensitivity: A Review and Recommendations for Future Directions

Anxiety sensitivity (AS) is defined as the fear of anxiety-related symptoms (e.g., a fast beating heart) and the consequences that may follow from these symptoms (e.g., a heart attack). Recently, child AS has been examined in relation to parental AS and parental anxiety to elucidate potential parental contributions. Given inconsistent findings to date, this review was intended to identify parental factors that are significant contributors to child AS. Two key findings from this review included the absence of a significant relationship between parental anxiety and child AS and the determination that the parent child AS association is conditional upon the child reporter, the parent reporter, and the specific dimensions of AS being tested. Recommendations for future directions include examining specific facets of AS, studying parental contributions amongst anxiety-disordered youth, and employing sufficiently large samples to allow for between child group comparisons.