Helping Children and Teens With Anxiety Disorders and Depression
Understanding New Research and Treatment
When anxiety takes over, it interferes with your child’s ability to cope with fear, worry, and depression — and treatment is necessary.
Early intervention is critical. Waiting for your child to mature or grow out of these behaviors may not be the right approach. In some cases children may develop chronic anxiety and depression, which is often associated with substance abuse and other high-risk behaviors.
My son Dan was in college, and by the time I arrived at his dorm, he had not eaten in more than a week. He was spending hours at a time sitting in one particular chair, hunched over with his head in his hands, doing absolutely nothing. He could not enter most of the buildings on campus and could only do minimal amounts of work at specific times. To top it all off, he was self-injuring.
