Anxiety Disorders in Children and Adolescents

Anxiety Disorders in Children and Adolescents

Anxiety disorders are one of the most common mental health disorders affecting children and adolescents. This disorder has been implicated in considerable impairments in the functional domains of family, social, and education. Youths with this disorder tend to suffer from low self-esteem. This paper details anxiety disorder in children and adolescents.

Literature Review

Anxiety disorder remains a global health concern. Anxiety in children and adolescents has a typical age of onset of between 5 and 7 years among children and 12-18 among adolescents (Méndez et al., 2022). The global prevalence of anxiety disorders among children and adolescents remains high. Racine et al. (2021) note that the global prevalence of pediatric and youth anxiety stands at 25.2%. The prevalence was particularly higher post-pandemic, with factors such as COVID disruptions interplaying in these increases.

Anxiety disorders are characterized by intense worry. According to DSM-V, pediatric and youth anxiety disorder is a mental health disorder typically diagnosed between the ages of 6 years for children and below 18 years for adolescents. The symptoms criteria listed in DSM-V include excessive anxiety occurring more days than not, affecting activities such as school performance and occurring for a duration not less than six months, inability to control the worry, and anxiety associated with muscle tension, restlessness, fatiguability, irritability, and sleep disturbance (Kupfer, 2022). These disturbances must not be attributed to any other cause.

Anxiety is a normative feeling, often affecting youth and children in many circumstances. Pathological anxiety, however, is characterized by an inability to control the worry. This feeling is accompanied by behavioral and cognitive manifestations, along with disruptive physical tension that usually affects psychosocial functioning. If left untreated, it can result in social isolation, clinical depression, and considerable improvements in social functioning (Solis et al., 2021). Anxiety disorders have a multifactorial etiology. Panic disorders, substance abuse disorders, medications, childhood experiences, and trauma are thought to interplay in the development of the disorder (Shackman & Fox, 2021). Anxiety affects persons of all ages, cultures, and backgrounds. Prevalence is, however, higher in persons between 18 and 29. Women are also more likely to experience anxiety compared to men.

Anxiety is thought to have been around since ancient times. Historical imprints on the disorder are, however, negative of the disorder being recognized as a mental health disorder. In the early Renaissance periods and ancient Greek cultures, hysteria and witchy worries were coined, and anxiety was associated with witchcraft. With the modernization of medicine being apparent in the 20th century, anxiety was recognized as a mental health disorder, and the term anxiety disorders was coined.

Theoretical postulates on anxiety disorders seek to define the symptoms of the disease as well as its development. Through the lens of psychoanalytical theory, anxiety is thought to result from libido transformation, with this transformation being a result of repression. In this respect, anxiety occurs when a person is stopped from carrying out a sexually instinctive act. Through the behavioral theory lens, anxiety is thought to result from increases in primary drives or overstimulation. In this respect, fear is a learned behavior, and anxiety is a form of fear occurring when the source of the fear is repressed.

Comprehensive management of anxiety disorder utilizes pharmacotherapeutic and non-pharmacotherapeutic approaches. Psychotherapies such as CBT maintain effectiveness in alleviating anxiety episodes (Lopes et al., 2021). Benzodiazepines are effective in managing acute anxiety disorder. These medications cause relaxation, enabling the patient to return to their normal lives (Walter et al., 2020). Further, selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors such as fluoxetine are also effective in alleviating anxiety symptoms (Zhou et al., 2019). Psychotherapies may be used adjunctively with pharmacotherapeutic modalities in chronic conditions.

Conclusion

Anxiety disorders remain a global health concern. These disorders are disruptive and result in improvements in psychosocial functioning. Pediatric and adolescent anxiety is an anxiety disorder diagnosed in childhood and adolescence. These disorders are particularly common and often affect the child’s schooling functionalities. Comprehensive management of pediatric and adolescent anxiety disorder utilizes psychotherapies such as CBT and pharmacotherapy with SSRS and benzodiazepines. These modalities are effective in alleviating anxiety manifestations.

References

Kupfer, D. J. (2022). Anxiety and DSM-5. Dialogues in Clinical Neuroscience, 17(3), 245–246. https://doi.org/10.31887/dcns.2015.17.3/dkupfer

Lopes, R. C. T., Šipka, D., Krieger, T., Klein, J. P., & Berger, T. (2021). Optimizing cognitive-behavioral therapy for social anxiety disorder and understanding the mechanisms of change: Study protocol for a randomized factorial trial. Internet Interventions, 26, 100480. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.invent.2021.100480

Méndez, F. J., Orgilés, M., Espada, J. P., García-Fernández, J. M., & Essau, C. A. (2022). Editorial: Anxiety disorders in childhood and adolescence: Psychopathology, assessment, and treatment. Frontiers in Psychology, 13. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.930299

Racine, N., McArthur, B. A., Cooke, J. E., Eirich, R., Zhu, J., & Madigan, S. (2021). Global prevalence of depressive and anxiety symptoms in children and adolescents during COVID-19. JAMA Pediatrics, 175(11), 1142. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamapediatrics.2021.2482

Shackman, A. J., & Fox, A. S. (2021). Two decades of anxiety neuroimaging research: New Insights and a look to the future. American Journal of Psychiatry, 178(2), 106–109. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.2020.20121733

Solis, E. C., van Hemert, A. M., Carlier, I. V. E., Wardenaar, K. J., Schoevers, R. A., Beekman, A. T. F., Penninx, B. W. J. H., & Giltay, E. J. (2021). The 9-year clinical course of depressive and anxiety disorders: New NESDA findings. Journal of Affective Disorders, 295, 1269–1279. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2021.08.108

Walter, H. J., Bukstein, O. G., Abright, A. R., Keable, H., Ramtekkar, U., Ripperger-Suhler, J., & Rockhill, C. (2020). Clinical practice guideline for the assessment and treatment of children and adolescents with anxiety disorders. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 59(10), 1107–1124. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaac.2020.05.005

Zhou, X., Zhang, Y., Furukawa, T. A., Cuijpers, P., Pu, J., Weisz, J. R., Yang, L., Hetrick, S. E., Del Giovane, C., Cohen, D., James, A. C., Yuan, S., Whittington, C., Jiang, X., Teng, T., Cipriani, A., & Xie, P. (2019). Different types and acceptability of psychotherapies for acute anxiety disorders in children and adolescents. JAMA Psychiatry, 76(1), 41. https://doi.org/10.1001/

ORDER A PLAGIARISM-FREE PAPER HERE

We’ll write everything from scratch

Final Paper
In Week 3, you created an annotated bibliography on a set of topics. For this assignment, use that information to write a thorough literature review. Develop a paper from the information you collected as well as what you learned from your course and text readings. To supplement your literature review for this paper, find two more scholarly journal articles related to any of the topics here (added to the six articles you reviewed in Week 3, for a total of at least eight articles; see article criteria from W3 Assignment 2):

Anxiety Disorders in Children and Adolescents

Criteria: Identify and describe your chosen disorder. Include the following:
The typical age of onset of the disorder
Symptoms or criteria for diagnosis
The typical course or progression of the disorder causes, and multicultural and diversity factors (including gender)
Associated problems or disorders that tend to co-occur
History: Describe the history of the disorder. (Explain how our understanding of the causes and treatment of the disorder has changed over time.)
Theories: Compare at least two psychological theories that seek to explain the causes and symptoms of the disorder.
Treatments: Identify and describe three of the most effective (on the basis of your research findings) treatments for the disorder. Provide information from your sources to back up your statements.
Write a paper in a Microsoft Word document, adhering to the following guidelines:

The paper should have the following sections:
A title page
Introduction: The introduction provides a brief overview of what will be covered and the purpose of the paper.
Literature review: The literature review should be based on the information you gathered and analyzed in Week 3, in addition to at least two additional articles.
Discussion and conclusion sections: The difference between a great paper and a marginal one is the depth and originality of the discussion and conclusion sections. This is where you bring together what you learned from the literature review (as well as through the course) in your concluding remarks regarding your topic.
References page