Anxiety in young people

Anxiety disorders are among the most common mental health issues seen in young people. This guide is to help you understand how anxiety starts in a young person, how it may present and how you can help them recover.

What is the basis of the symptoms of anxiety?

Our bodies have a built in protective mechanism that dates from over 50,000 years ago when we might have been living in the jungle. Let’s go back to those days. Imagine we are walking through the jungle and a Tiger jumps out in front of us. Our lives are in danger, we need to run. We tell our brains something really frightening is happening so it swiftly changes the amount of stress hormones being pumped around our body to get us ready to run. These hormones redistribute blood in our body. We stop digesting food, as we don’t need to right now; we might get butterflys in our stomach as a result, or feel slightly sick or even be sick. Our stress hormones move the blood to our heart and lungs, so our heart beats faster and our breathing changes to allow more oxygen to get to our muscles for us to run. We start to sweat due to all these changes. The blood supply is moved from the area of our brains required to think as we are not going to turn to the Tiger and say “Please Mr Tiger can we talk about this”; it moves to the area of the brain that helps us move and run.

This can save our lives when a tiger is chasing us in the jungle.

When people start have anxiety symptoms which include the physical symptoms such as sweating, butterflys in the stomach, feeling sick, palpitations and breathing faster, this is because they are seeing tigers where they do not exist. When this happens the young person wants to avoid the situation where they believe “The tiger” lives.

Why do children see tigers that do not exist?

  • Some young people may have relatives with anxiety disorders and they may have inherited a propensity to anxiety.
  • Children learn from those around them so if you as a parent are scared of spiders and show your child that you, or check that doors are locked repeatedly or the hob is turned off over and over, the children around you are likely to learn this as necessary behaviour to prevent a situation like a Tiger coming to the house.
  • Children can misinterpret how dangerous situations are by hearing information, (or part of information), that they magnify and make more scary. For example if a young person hears about a terrorist attack on the news but they are not given facts about how rare they are and how good our country is at preventing them they may start feeling they or the people they love are at risk when away from home
  • Anxiety can start secondary to other illnesses such as depression

What symptoms do children have when anxious?

  • The physical symptoms of anxiety that are described when a tiger is chasing occur. The young person then worries why they are having these and become scared which leads to more stress hormone pumping around the body and an increase in the physical symptoms
  • They may start trying to avoid doing things or going to certain places as they see “The tigers there” and feel unsafe.
  • They may lie awake at night worrying – thoughts come into their head about what they could have done differently that day and about frightening things that might happen the next day. They start to predict the future in a frightening way and they start to feel they do not have the skills to cope.
  • They may start wetting the bed or having bad dreams
  • They may become more irritable or tearful or clingy

What can you do to help?

  • Explain to your child why you know they will be fine in the situation they want to avoid. Feed them lots of examples of times they have shown they are competent to manage in the past eg the time they walked into pre-school knowing no one but let go of your hand and turned around and smiled and waved and go through the day fine. Give lots of evidence base against their worry. When anxious they cannot see this themselves they block this evidence out while piling up their worries so they need it fed to them.
  • When they hear something negative eg on social media or the news or from a neighbour challenge the information with evidence base to show them the other side of the story. People often focus on interesting gossip and bad news, balance this with good news. (Imagine a scale – they get weighed down on the negative side – swing the balance to the positive side).
  • Where possible do not let them avoid situations. If they avoid something they are anxious about they do not have an opportunity to see they can cope and add positive evidence to their scale. The negative evidence grows with avoidance.
  • Explain to them about their body being made to protect them against tigers but they are seeing tigers where they do not exist. Understanding this can help them calm when they feel the physical symptoms.

Are anxiety disorders treatable?

  • Anxiety disorders are very treatable. The earlier that you get treatment for your child the easier it is to treat. People often hope these will just go away but they tend to grow. Treatment will teach your child helpful skills for life. If they find worries popping up in the future (like whack-a-mole), they will have a tool box to help hit them down one at a time.