Gibler RC, et al. - Given the association of anxiety in the context of school with a significant school-related disability, researchers sought to investigate specific aspects of school anxiety in a pediatric chronic pain population. They administered questionnaires assessing school anxiety and functioning to adolescents with chronic pain (n=30) and age-matched and sex-matched controls (n=30) and their parents. They noted significantly more cognitive, behavioral, and psychophysiological symptoms of school anxiety among adolescents with chronic pain vs healthy controls. In situations involving negative social evaluation and peer aggression, significantly greater school anxiety was also reported by youth with pain. As per exploratory analyses, behavioral and psychophysiological school anxiety symptoms were more strongly endorsed and in social-evaluative situations, more symptoms were reported by adolescents with chronic pain reporting school refusal behaviors. Lower school functioning among youth was endorsed in correlation to higher cognitive school anxiety symptoms and anxiety in situations involving academic failure relative to those reporting higher functioning. These findings support undertaking an individualized approach for appraising school anxiety which considers the unique sources of anxiety (eg, social vs academic) that may lay the groundwork for the refinement of school functioning interventions in pediatric chronic pain.