• April 24, 2024

The anxiety is a psychiatric disorder that is characterized by feeling an excessive fear towards something or someone, but, how to identify the anxiety in children ?

Children may feel too anxious about problems at home, because they are going to get an injection or to see a spider or something in the environment that they do not like.

Although it is thought that anxiety is equivalent to fear, they are not the same. Fear arises when we face at a specific moment something that represents a danger, while in anxiety we anticipate a situation that is not necessarily dangerous and, on the contrary, our fear exceeds the characteristics of the stimulus.

Previously it was thought that only adults have anxiety, but nowadays it is known that among the child population is a disorder that commonly occurs.

Do not confuse it!

The doctor Laura Hernández Guzmán, from the Faculty of Psychology of the UNAM , explained that childhood anxiety is confused with depression, because they share symptoms and are sometimes diagnosed indistinctly.

About 30% of children have internalized problems, that is, anxiety and depression, and both disorders have very similar symptoms.

Among the most common are the somatic ones, that is, the child shows that his stomach hurts, his head is nauseated.

If an anxiety disorder is not detected and treated in time, it can lead to the child not doing activities that he likes, present low school performance and low self-esteem. This also causes that excessive fear becomes a problem for the family and affects the behavior of the child.

Some anxiety disorders have been typified as generalized anxiety disorder, separation anxiety disorder, specific phobias, social phobia and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Children only recognized separation anxiety, which occurs when the child shows excessive concern for being separated from their parents, from their home and does not like to be alone.

The indicated thing is to provide care to the anxious child, because "by not treating the problems are more complicated, and the way we interact with the environment is progressively more complex throughout the development and if we do not have the tools to face these situations from ages early, we will not do it successfully, "concluded the UNAM psychologist.

Video Medicine: Ennui Breathes Malice - Do Not Confuse Bravery For Courage (April 2024).