Childhood Anxiety Intervention

Childhood Anxiety Intervention  

Introduction:

        When defining Anxiety, we associate the disorder with fear, worry, nervousness, or unease. Typically, anxiety is a direct fear of a change, an unknown outcome, or a large event that normally does not occur in one’s every day. Children suffer from this disorder in many different facets of their young lives. They can feel test anxiety at school, social anxiety, or even severe nervous reactions to an upcoming soccer game.  Anxiety, coupled with both acute fear and depression is common in children and is not always treatable. In fact, up to 40% of children facing anxiety are unresponsive to treatment (Wei, Kendall, 2014). “Anxiety and, to a lesser extent, depression are common mental health problems in elementary school-aged children. Anxiety and depression affect children’s quality of life and are a risk factor for several adverse life outcomes, such as poor academic and professional achievement, substance abuse, anxiety, depression and other mental disorders, and suicidal behavior” (Kösters, Chinapaw, Zwaanswijk, Wal, Koot, 2015). Intervention practices are commonly sought in children, because anxiety often goes undetected in them if not given the opportunity to express their feelings. Fortunately, there are options for these children that have shown positive results. Parents can step in and intervene and so can their schools. In-school Interventions such as “Friends for Life” and Intervention Paradigms as well as Parental counseling at home are available and doable opportunities for children facing anxiety to cope with the disorder or even overcome it.

Intervention 1: Friends for Life

Friends for Life is a school based prevention program focused on children with both anxiety and depression symptoms. The study was done in a natural classroom setting for one year using a quasi- experimental design. Quasi Experiments are, just to break it down, studies done at random between a controlled (untreated) group of people, and an uncontrolled (treated) group of people. This is done so that study participants have the same odds of being assigned to the controlled group as they do to the treated group.

Children from grades six to eight, from 25 random schools in the United States were tested. The study explored possible consistencies between race, gender, age, or any other outside problems. “Specific cognitive behavior therapy techniques used in Friends for Life have been suggested to be more effective for girls. 17 Smaller intervention outcomes have been reported for children with more severe initial anxiety problems.12 Sandler et al. found that studies with more ethnic minority participants yielded higher effect sizes” (Kösters, Chinapaw, Zwaanswijk, Wal, Koot, 2015).

All intervention was done with parental consent during school hours. A pair of prevention workers attended the school groups and implemented the Friends for Life program. Students were surveyed with a questionnaire where children picked how applicable a symptom was to them. This survey method is called the RCAD, and has shown adequate results when applied to past studies. From that point, teachers and peers also fill out nominations about fellow students in the classroom. The questions are tallied up on a point system. The purpose here being to identify children who have anxiety symptoms; to gauge exactly how severe the symptoms that an individual student is facing, and finally to get those children talking about their feelings. This identification process is reported to parents and further treatment is recommended from that point. Often, early signs of anxiety can be detected and the disorder can be prevented or met in its earliest stages.

Results of Friends for Life indicated that children who were part of intervention reported a continuing and significant decrease in anxiety and depression scores as compared with the control group. One year after intervention, participating children’s anxiety and depression levels were comparable to those of the general population. A small number of classmates reported increased internalizing problems in intervention-group children immediately after intervention. However, those effects disappeared over time. In sum, “Friends for Life, an indicated prevention program, yielded long-lasting and continuing reduction in anxiety and depression problems when implemented in daily school practice” (Kösters, Chinapaw, Zwaanswijk, Wal, Koot, 2015).

Intervention 2: Parental Involvement

“Developmental and etiological models suggest that parental factors are relevant to the onset and maintenance of childhood anxiety, researchers have proposed and investigated family-based interventions with increased parent work in treatment, aiming to improve the efficacy of treatment for childhood anxiety” (Wei, Kendall, 2014). However, data to date does not always back up this statement, and so we have to ask: Are parental and family involvement in anxiety interventions going to even work? The answer is yes.

This study suggested that anxiety can be hereditary and that parents may be able to empathize with children in a way that would influence the child to feel more comfortable in their disorder. It is suggested that children begin their descent into anxiety after seeing a parent suffer from an episode of fear or depression. Furthermore, it is suggested that parents who also suffer from anxiety are more inclined to seek help for their children. Parental acceptance of their child’s anxiety is the first step to intervention.

In sum, parents need to be aware of their own status with anxiety. Being able to identify personal stressors can help a parent directly help their child. It is said that conflict directly feeds a child’s anxiety, and so it is important to have an open communication line between parent and child. This intervention is based solely on awareness and open communication: fighting the battle with anxiety together can heal both parent and child (Wei, Kendall, 2014).  

Intervention 3: Interventions Paradigm at School.