Anxiety affects children in different ways

Conclusion This is a useful exploratory study, which should give a good indication of the range of diagnoses among children and adolescents referred for anxiety disorders to specialist mental health services in England. Children and adolescents, particularly in research, can often be placed into one homogenous group, and this study shows specific diagnoses can differ significantly between the groups. For example, this study showed that children more often had separation anxiety disorder. And adolescents were marginally (but not significantly) more likely to have generalised anxiety disorder and social anxiety disorder. Adolescents were also more likely than children to have mood disorder and to have problems with school attendance. The researchers warn they have considered childhood and adolescence as two distinct developmental periods, with age 13 being the turning point. In reality, as they say, differences between diagnoses and treatment needs would be unlikely to occur in the same way in every growing child. They suggest that further studies focus on narrower age bands. As the researchers also acknowledge, the people in this study were from a predominantly white British ethnic background and from relatively high socioeconomic backgrounds. The study also did not include those with autism spectrum disorders, obsessive compulsive disorders, or post-traumatic stress disorder. This study is likely to give a good indication of the proportion of children and adolescents wit...
Source: NHS News Feed - Category: Consumer Health News Tags: Mental health Source Type: news