Focuses on the differentiation between acute and chronic school-phobic adolescents. Discusses incidence, classification systems, case descriptions, and distinctive features of acute and chronic school phobia. Identification of appropriate treatment strategies is stressed. (Author)

School refusal behavior is a common problem seen by mental health professionals and by educators but little consensus is available as to its classification, assessment, and treatment. This study assessed 143 youth with primary school refusal behavior and their parents to examine diagnoses that are most commonly associated with proposed functions…

The confusion surrounding all aspects of school refusal may rest partly on the misguided assumption that the disturbance represents a single syndrome. Five consistently emerging variables which may help distinguish among school phobic types were abstracted from the literature: extensiveness of disturbance, mode of onset, age, fear source, and…