Course Description: This course is based upon material published in the Hindawi Publishing Corporation Psychiatry Journal and is available as an open access article.

Presently most adolescent anxiety disorder screening instruments make their determination of running a high risk for an anxiety disorder on the basis of a cut-off score measured by a single screening which can lead to false positives. Therefore, the goal of this study is to examine whether a repeated administration of the SCARED screening instrument for DSM-5 anxiety disorder symptoms could help in the detection of true positives while also avoiding false positives. Participants were 923 early adolescents from the general community. The adolescents’ ages at the first annual screening ranged from 10 to 15 with an average of 12.5 years. In a prospective five-year longitudinal design, the adolescents completed the SCARED screening instrument for anxiety disorder symptoms on a yearly basis. To detect true positives and avoid false positives, the data were analyzed with Receiver Operating Characteristics (ROC) cut-off score analyses. ROC cut-off score analyses revealed that the sensitivity and specificity of high risk were greatly improved for repeated screenings above those of a single screening. The findings of this study demonstrate that a screening instrument (such as the SCARED) should be administered not just once but several times in order to better determine true positives and avoid false positives.

This course on the SCARED screening’s effectiveness in avoiding false positives and negatives in adolescent anxiety disorder screenings is designed for social workers, professional counselors, psychologists, nurses, and substance abuse counselors, who do clinical work.  This course is appropriate for beginning, intermediate and advanced level practitioners. The course material includes a brief literature review of interventions and results from the study.  It may also be useful for licensed clinicians who require clinical continuing education courses for license renewal.  

The course is based on a journal article which includes research.  It contains statistical analysis and data that some clinicians enjoy reading and others do not.  A major benefit of reading research based articles for continuing education is they provide practitioners with the latest findings in their field.  

Authors:  Hale, Raaljmakers, Hoof, Meeus

Learning Objectives: This course will provide the practitioner with detailed information regarding. Specifically, a professional will:

• Describe the SCARED screening instrument for DSM-5 anxiety disorders

• Identify ways of avoiding false positives when administering screening instruments for anxiety disorders among adolescents.

• Recognize whether a repeated administration of the SCARED screenings instrument for DSM-5 anxiety disorder symptoms can help in detecting true positives while avoiding false positives.