Nearly 6 million children were diagnosed with anxiety between 2016 and 2019, according to the CDC.
Now the United States Preventive Services Task Force is recommending children be screened for anxiety starting at age 8. There is good research showing that developing an anxiety disorder as a child increases the likelihood of anxiety or depression as an adult, which then increases the chance of chronic mental and physical health conditions and substance abuse.
Dr. Kevin Dazy is a pediatrician at Children’s Hospital of Michigan and strongly supports the new recommendation.
“Being the father myself of a 7-year-old, I can tell you just from my own personal experience and from being a pediatrician, is that there are a lot of changes going on in the body around that time,” Dazy said. “I think it’s about time we started screening for anxiety in that age range. You know, around the age of 7 or 8, leading into adolescence. I think that’s a critical time period that we start to use some of our screening tools to help identify kids that might be at risk.”
There are standardised screening questionnaires that doctors may use. Dazy said it just takes some quick questions and letting the child open up and it’s easy to identify kids who may be struggling.
“Some of that might just be making changes at home, talking with the parents, making sure the parents are talking through using coping skills, talking through situations that arise in their daily lives,” Dazy said.
If that isn’t enough, there are pediatricians that specialize in behavioral therapy and there are child psychologists. Even if a child is referred to a specialist, there are treatments like cognitive behavior therapy and talk therapy that are often successful. Treatment with medication would be the last resort.
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