Welcome to our Summer Blog Series examining the impact of anxiety disorders on church participation and spiritual development in kids. In today’s post, we’ll examine how common anxiety disorders occur in kids and discuss the difference between normal fears and pathological anxiety.

Fear and worry are common in “typical” children.  Some examples of age-appropriate fears are listed below:

Kids with anxiety disorders are different from their peers in that they misperceive the level of threat or danger in their environment. Fear and worry become a cause for concern when they significantly interfere with a child’s ability to function in an age-appropriate way in school, with friends, as a member of their family or in extracurricular activities, including church.

When a child is experiencing anxiety or fear that significantly interferes with major areas of development or life functioning they may be identified with an anxiety disorder.

Several large studies have reported that at any given time, 6-20% of children and teens experience symptoms of one or more anxiety disorders. An excellent summary of the research may be found here. An exact prevalence rate for anxiety disorders is difficult to calculate because some kids may experience significant functional impairment and emotional distress from anxiety without describing symptoms that completely fulfill the formal diagnostic criteria. Research does tell us the following:

• Girls report higher rates of anxiety than boys, especially for panic disorder, social anxiety and specific phobias.
• Kids often develop symptoms of new anxiety disorders over time.
• As the severity of a child’s anxiety symptoms increase, the likelihood that symptoms will persist over time also increases.
• Adolescents with anxiety disorders are at greater risk of anxiety, depression, illicit drug abuse and academic underachievement as adults.
• Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder appears to be especially persistent. While symptoms of OCD may wax and wane over time, they rarely resolve completely.