Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-hc48f Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T23:13:33.846Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Wilfulness in School-Phobic Adolescents

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 January 2018

Ian Berg
Affiliation:
High Lands, Scalebor Park Hospital, Burley in Wharfedale; Department of Psychiatry, University of Leeds
Tony Collins
Affiliation:
High Lands, Scalebor Park Hospital, Burley in Wharfedale, Yorkshire

Extract

School-phobic youngsters have sometimes been described as wilful and stubborn in the family situation (Hersov, 1960), and this tendency has been invoked to explain the particular occurrence of school phobia in early adolescence (Leventhal and Sills, 1964). The emotional upset shown by these young people when faced with the prospect of going to school (Berg, Nichols and Pritchard, 1969), may occasionally appear to be more in the nature of anger, defiance and temper than either fearfulness or misery (Smith, 1970). The fact that in the general population dislike of school is reflected in actual absence only during the secondary school years (Mitchell and Shepherd, 1967) supports the view that assertiveness, which presumably becomes more effective as the child reaches the teens, plays some part in school refusal.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 1974 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Berg, I., Nichols, K. & Prttchard, C. (1969) School phobia—its classification and relationship to dependency. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 10, 123–41.Google Scholar
Berg, I. & McGuire, R. (1971) Are school phobic adolescents overdependent? British Journal of Psychiatry, 119, 167–8.Google Scholar
Berg, I. & McGuire, R. (1974) Are mothers of school phobic adolescents overprotective? British Journal of Psychiatry, 124, 1013.Google Scholar
Cattell, R. B., Wagnes, A. & Gattell, M. D. (1970) Adolescent personality structure in Q-data, checked in the high school personality questionnaire. British Journal of Psychology, 61, 3954.Google Scholar
Hamilton, M., McGuire, R. J. & Goodman, M. J. (1965) The P.L.U.S. system of programs: an integration system of computer programs for biological data. British Journal of Mathematical and Statistical Psychology, 18, 265–6.Google Scholar
Hersov, L. A. (1960) Refusal to go to school. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 1, 137–45.Google Scholar
Leventhal, T. & Sills, M. (1964) Self image in school phobia. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 34, 685–95.Google Scholar
Mitchell, S. & Shepherd, M. (1967) The child who dislikes going to school. British Journal of Educational Psychology, 37, 3240.Google Scholar
Oppenheim, A. N. (1966) Questionnaire Design and Attitude Measurement. London: Heinemann.Google Scholar
Smith, S. L. (1970) School refusal with anxiety: a review of sixty-three cases. Canadian Psychiatric Association Journal, 15, 257–64.Google Scholar
Submit a response

eLetters

No eLetters have been published for this article.