This scientific work provides an analysis of the features of objective and subjective anxiety manifestations, as well as their correlations with the characteristics of obsessions and compulsions in children with schizoform, neurotic, and emotional-behavioral disorders.

Anxiety manifestations are installed into the structure of a wide range of mental illnesses. In particular, obsessive-compulsive disorder and other diseases affiliated with obsessions are always accompanied by varying degrees of anxiety, which cause severe distress to patients and lead to a significant decrease in their quality of life. In children and adolescents, this situation is aggravated by the fact that the introspective perception of anxiety by patients of this age category can be significantly different from its external manifestations, which are visible to parents/guardians and other persons of their social environment, as well as to doctors, which leads to an incorrect assessment of the mental state of such patients.

The aim of the study was to establish the features of objective and subjective anxiety manifestations, as well as their correlations with the characteristics of obsessions and compulsions in children with schizoform, neurotic, emotional-behavioral disorders.

100 children were investigated, and according to nosological affiliation divided into 3 groups. In group 1 (G1) there were 40 children with schizoform disorders. Group 2 (G2) consisted of 30 children with neurotic disorders. In group 1 (G1) there were 40 children with emotional and behavioral disorders. The State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and Lavrentieva and Titarenko’s "Child’s Anxiety Level" questionnaire were used to determine the features of anxiety manifestations. The level of obsessions and compulsions was determined according to the Children’s Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale — (СY-BOCS).

State anxiety was highest in children with emotional and behavioral disorders; at the same time, their level of trait anxiety was determined to be the lowest among the examined groups. In children with schizoform disorders, the severity of trait and state anxiety did not differ and corresponded to the average level. In children with neurotic disorders, trait anxiety prevailed over state anxiety and formed the basis for the development of obsessive-compulsive disorder. Because of their ability to postpone the realization of compulsions until the moment when they are left alone, in order not to upset their parents, the latter rate their own children’s anxiety level lower than parents of children from other groups. Children with disorders of the schizoform spectrum are incapable of delaying the realization of compulsions, because their mechanism of occurrence is similar to violent actions that are almost impossible to control; parents notice the child’s inappropriate actions and explain them as the realization of a high level of anxiety. Children with emotional-behavioral disorders are fixed on traumatic events and related affectively intense obsessions, and do not hide them due to the desire to receive sympathy and comfort, therefore parents of children of this group also rated their level of anxiety as high. The severity of obsessive-compulsive symptoms in children with schizoform and neurotic disorders was equally high, while in children with emotional-behavioral disorders, obsessions and compulsions were significantly less intense.