Anne E. Sauve, Ph.D.

ANXIETY DISORDERS
All children experience anxiety. In fact, anxiety is actually expected at specific times during childhood development.  It is not normal, however, for anxiety to interfere with a child’s daily activities e.g., sleep, school performance, friendships/social skills, or family functioning. When functioning is impacted by anxiety, it is recommended that you consider professional help for your child.

Separation Anxiety Disorder: Excessive distress over daily separations from parents, home or familiar situations and recurrent thoughts and fears about the safety of themselves and/or their parents. The majority of children who exhibit school refusal behaviors have separation anxiety.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder(GAD): This is the most common anxiety disorder among adolescents and it involves frequent and intense worry about various issues, typically related to day-to-day events. Children with GAD are plagued by “what if” thinking and will frequently seek reassurance from adults to calm themselves.

Phobias: Extreme, irrational fears about a specific object or event e.g., heights, thunderstorms, bees, snakes etc. Although the object of the phobia does involve some threat and risk, the panic associated with the object or event is disproportionate to the risk.

Social Anxiety: Intense fear of social or performance related situations, often leading to avoidance out fear of being embarrassed, humiliated or even ridiculed.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder: Recurrent and intrusive thoughts (obsessions) are accompanied by an overwhelming need to engage in a deliberate physical or mental action (compulsion) to reduce the worry and discomfort created by the obsession. These compulsive behaviors are excessive and completed in a rigid manner. The behaviors are quite unpleasant and the person is driven to perform them in order to reduce the anxiety.

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