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Kyle Green | The Roanoke Times

Virginia Tech professor Tom Ollendick leads a university project designed to study and treat childhood fears. Researches try to educate children about the object of their fears and then introduce them to it in a safe environment. Top childhood fears include dogs and the dark.

Childhood phobias

• A phobia is a fear that is frequent, intense and lasts at least six months.
• Untreated childhood fears can lead to adult anxiety disorders and depression. One-half to two-thirds of children with phobias become adults with phobias.
• The most common childhood phobias are: dogs, bees/insects, costumed characters, storms, the dark

Is Johnny afraid?

• Virginia Tech’s Child Study Center is still doing research on phobia sufferers, ages 7 to 12. Treatment is free, and participants receive a modest stipend.
• Participants must commit to eight sessions, including seven sessions for interviews and assessments, and one three-hour cognitive therapy session in which subjects are gradually exposed to the items they fear.
• In past studies, 72 percent of those studied were still phobia-free one year after the therapy.
• The study includes parental involvement. Half of those participating will be randomly assigned to receive the child-only treatment, while parents will be involved in treatment of the remaining participants.
• For more information on the phobias study, contact the center at (540) 231-8276 or e-mail childphobias@vt.edu. On the Net: phobias.psyc.vt.edu
• The clinic is also beginning a project to study and treat children who are chronically oppositional, noncompliant and argumentative; ages 8 to 12; participants must commit to 10 therapy sessions plus assessments. Call (540) 231-8276 or e-mail childproblems@vt.edu. for more information.

Eileen Yost couldn't go to sleep when a nighttime thunderstorm was forecast -- even if there wasn't a cloud in the sky. Ten at the time, she watched The Weather Channel constantly.

At home, she would crawl into bed with her mother. When a storm emerged while she was at school, she freaked.

"She was inconsolable," recalled her mother, Geri Yost of Pulaski County. "She had an incredible teacher who would just sit and hold her until she calmed down."

The teacher also recommended Eileen take part in the Virginia Tech Child Study Center's phobia project -- a research program designed to study and treat persistent childhood fears. The basic strategy is to educate children about the object of their fears and then to introduce them to it in a safe environment.

Led by university professor Tom Ollendick and buttressed by a $1.2 million grant from the National Institutes of Health, the ongoing project takes place in a brick building on the edge of campus, where clinicians can be seen carrying in dogs and snakes and all manner of scary things.

Occasional, passers-by can even glimpse Dora the Explorer -- costumed characters are one of the top childhood phobias, along with dogs, insects/bees, storms and the dark.

Post 4/16 fears

Some pediatricians tend not to take phobias seriously, Ollendick said. "And most fears and phobias do correct over time. But how much time?

"And what does the child miss in the meantime?"

Untreated childhood phobias can persist into adolescence and adulthood and lead to more severe problems.

One child with a fear of dogs stopped playing baseball and even refused to go to school because he thought he might see a dog outside or near the school playground. He became depressed because he was missing out on playing with friends and going on camping trips with his family. As a young adult, he told Ollendick, he suffered panic attacks and depression.

Ollendick's latest grant calls for working with 150 families over four years. If past experience holds true, a few desperate parents will drive their children from as far away as New York and Pennsylvania, though most will come from the New River Valley.

Ollendick said he anticipates children who might have fears related to the Virginia Tech shootings -- ones whose parents work at Tech, perhaps, and are afraid for mom or dad to go to work.

"We did work with kids after 9/11 on phobias related to that -- kids who weren't even in New York but saw it over and over on TV," he said. "Events like this often have more pernicious effects six months to a year after the trauma."

Gradual exposure

Ollendick has treated children who wouldn't go outside to play for fear of running into a stray dog; children who won't go to camp because they might be stung by a bee; families who can't travel because their children fear airplanes. One mother was embarrassed because her son was afraid of buttons and ties -- and insisted on wearing sweat pants to church.

"The hardest thing to treat is thunderstorms. We can't bring them in, so we'll use videotapes," Ollendick said. "Ideally, we look for a cloudy day."

Bee-phobic children learn where the stinger is and that the worst thing to do is to run away when one comes near. Clinicians then take the children to Tech's horticultural gardens to experience the bees firsthand.

In Eileen Yost's case, researchers took her to a regional weather station, where a meteorologist talked to her about forecasting weather. He also explained how rare tornados were in the region and bombarded her with handouts about storms.

At home, Eileen began spouting facts about thunder and lightning. "She'd spout the educational part whenever she got anxious about it," Geri Yost recalled of her daughter, now 14.

"She's pretty calm about them now. If there's bad weather coming, I work a half-mile down the road, and I'll ask if she wants to stay alone or come to work with me, and she'll say, 'Mom, I'm fine.' "

Pre-verbal memories

Yost, a school-based counselor for New River Valley Community Services, praised the effect Ollendick's clinic had on Eileen as well as her older two children, who have also participated in the study.

As an infant during the 1990 Panamanian invasion, her son, Carl, lived with the family on an Air Force base. "When the helicopters engaged in firefights, usually over our rooftop, the windows rattled. It was terrifying," Yost recalled.

Carl didn't remember the events, but his mom knew they had to be triggering his fear of planes and loud noises. "As he got older, he'd duck when airplanes flew overhead no matter how high above us they were," she said. "He'd get sick to his stomach at the sound of fireworks.

"He had post-traumatic stress based on pre-verbal memories," she said.

Clinicians showed him films about airplanes and took him to the airport.

Now, 18-year-old Carl is in college at an automotive school in Ohio. He wants to be a NASCAR engineer, maybe later open his own car-repair business. He was a screamer in a death-metal Christian band.

He no longer ducks at the sound of passing airplanes overhead.