Everybody knows what it's feels like to feel anxious--butterflies in your stomach, the tension you feel when someone is angry, the way your heart pounds if you're in danger. Anxiety rouses you to action. It gears you up to face a threatening situation. It makes you study harder for that exam, and keeps ou on your toes when you're making a speech. In genral, it helps you cope. But if you have an anxiety disorder, this normally helpful emotion can do just the opposite--it can keep you from coping and can distrupt your daily life. An anxiety disorder may make you feel anxious most of the time, without any apparent reason. Or the anxious feelings may be so uncomfortable that to avoid them you may stop some everyday activities. Or you may have occasional bouts of anxiety so intense they terrify and immobilize you.
Children and teens have anxiety in their lives, and like adults, they can suffer from anxiety disorders, too. Stressful events such as starting school, moving, or the loss of a parent can trigger the onset of an anxiety disorder, but a specific stressor need not be the precursor to the development of a disorder. Research has shown that if left untreated, children with anxiety disorders are at higher risk to perform poorly in school, to have less developed social skills, and to be more vulnerable to substance abuse. Generalized Anxiety Disorder and social anxiety disorder are more common in middle childhood and adolescence; panic disorder can occur in adolescence, too.
Some specific types of anxiety disorders include:
- Generalized Anxiety Disorder: People with GAD are always anticipating disaster, often worrying excessively about health, money, family, or school. Worries are often accompanied by physical symptoms like trembling, muscle tension, and nausea
- Panic Disorder: People with panic disorder have feelings of terror that strike suddenly and repeatedly with no warning. Symptoms may include: pounding heart, chest pains, lightheadedness or dizziness, nausea, flushes or chills, shortness of breath, tingling or numbness, shaking, feelins of unreeality, terror, a feeling of being out of control, fear of dying, sweating
- Phobias: intense, irrational fears
- Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder: anxious thought or rituals you feel you can't control
- Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder: a debilitating condition that follows a terrifying event; persistent frightening thoughts and memories of the ordeal and feel emotionally numb
Helpful Resources:
Anxiety Disorders Association of America - dedicated to the prevention, treatment and cure of anxiety disorders and to imporving te lives of all people who suffer from them. This website includes a self-test for teens.
National Institue of Mental Health - The mission of NIMH is to transform the understanding and treatment of mental illnesses through basic and clinical research, paving the way for prevention, recovery and cure.
High School Guidance
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