Background: Over the last ten years a considerable amount of literature has described the socio-emotional discomfort that is often associated with learning disorders at all ages, but a comprehensive review about internalizing symptoms in dyslexia is needed.

Data sources: Medical and psychological search engines (PubMed, PsychArticles and Academic Search Elite) were used to identify all those studies published in peer-reviewed journals, relative to the association of reading difficulties, dyslexia, or learning disorders/disabilities, and internalizing symptoms, anxiety, or depression.

Results: The present review of studies confirms dyslexia as a specific risk factor for an increased internalizing, anxious and depressive symptomatology. The severity of dyslexia, its comorbidity with attention deficit disorder/hyperactivity disorder, the level of perceived social support and female gender are some of the factors that mostly influence its psycho-social outcomes.

Conclusion: Findings of this review confirm that suitable social, health and school policies aimed at identifying and treating dyslexia as a cause of discomfort are called for, and confirm the clinical need to assess and contrast additional risk factors that may increase the probability of this suffering in dyslexic students.

Key words: anxiety; dyslexia; internalizing symptoms; reading disability

                  World J Pediatr 2009;5(4):255-264