The Anxious Child
Aug. 15, 2000 -- Dustin, age 12, tries to avoid school each morning by telling his mother he has a stomachache or that his asthma is flaring up.
Elise, age 8, feels so nervous around her peers that her heart beats frantically and she has difficulty breathing.
There are many more children and adolescents like Dustin and Elise who live with anxiety disorders like separation anxiety and social phobia. Separation anxiety is excessive anxiety related to separation from the home or from those people to whom the person is most attached, while social phobia is marked by excessive worry about embarrassing oneself in front of other people.
Elias Sarkis, MD, a child psychiatrist and the medical director of Alachua Family Psychiatry in Gainesville, Fla., says that such disorders in children should be treated for two very important reasons: "No. 1 is that we need to treat it because the child is suffering, and No. 2 is that the child will continue to suffer into adulthood if it is not treated."
Studies have shown that such anxiety disorders increase a child's risk of developing psychiatric problems in adulthood, including depression, panic attacks, anxiety, eating disorders, and even agoraphobia -- anxiety about being in places or situations from which escape might be impossible or embarrassing.
"What is normal is for kids to exhibit some complaint when being separated from parents at younger ages," says Sarkis, also a clinical associate professor of child psychiatry at the University of Florida in Gainesville. "What is not normal is for, say, a 5-year-old not to be able to sleep alone, go to kindergarten, or be terrified by the idea of being separated from a parent."
A new study in the August issue of the Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry attempted to clarify what kinds of anxiety children of different age groups and races are likely to experience. Children aged 8 through 12 are more likely to have social phobia and/or separation anxiety, whereas adolescents are more likely to have features of social phobia alone.