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One in five childhood fears is so serious that it should be treated like an
adult psychiatric disorder, a Dutch report says. A team led by Peter Muris of
the University of Maastricht asked 290 primary school children about their fears
and ranked them on a clinical scale. In 66 cases the fear was so bad that it
interfered with the child’s daily life, making it serious enough to class as an
anxiety disorder (Behaviour Research and Therapy, vol 38, p 217).
“There seems to be a need for early intervention,” says Muris. The most common
fears include spiders,…