Help your child to deal with fear by taking their feelings seriously, encouraging them to talk about their anxieties, telling them the facts and giving them the opportunity to confront their fears at their own pace and with your support.
Having negative or traumatic life events early in childhood. Mental health issues in family members. Certain physical health conditions (such as thyroid problems or heart arrhythmias), or certain substances or medicines. The physical health problems can produce anxiety symptoms, or make them worse.
The most effective treatments are: Exposure therapy. This therapy focuses on changing your response to the object or situation that you fear. Gradual, repeated exposure to the source of your specific phobia, and the related thoughts, feelings and sensations, may help you learn to manage your anxiety.
As many adults know all too well, phobias aren't necessarily something you grow out of. “Children have fewer fears as they get older,” says Symons, “but they can be more intense.” Parents of adolescents and young teenagers often need to don their detective caps when it comes to discerning a phobia in their child.
Common conditions associated with anxiety for children with autism include: Phobias, or intense, irrational fears of specific things. In children with autism, such phobias can arise from heightened sensory stimulation such as loud noises (for example, fear of popping balloons at an early age can develop into a phobia).
Phobias persist for several years or even decades in 10–30% of cases, and are strongly predictive of onset of other anxiety, mood, and substance-use disorders.
Some people avoid the object or situation that triggers their phobia. But this can make your fear worse over time. Being in a scenario involving your phobia can be very difficult though. You may need professional help to enable you to do this.
Secondary school children were highly afflicted with social phobia (14.9%), agoraphobia (11.7%) and specific phobia (9.6%), while preparatory students (8.3%) were more likely to have 'medical' phobia (fear of physical illness, medical tests and procedures).
a phobia may be associated with a particular incident or trauma. a phobia may be a learned response that a person develops early in life from a parent or sibling (brother or sister) genetics may play a role – there's evidence to suggest that some people are born with a tendency to be more anxious than others.
Almost all phobias can be successfully treated and cured. Treating simple phobias involves gradually becoming exposed to the animal, object, place or situation that causes fear. This is known as desensitisation or self-exposure therapy.
Most phobias are treatable, but no single treatment is guaranteed to work for all phobias. In some cases, a combination of different treatments may be recommended. The main treatment types are: self-help techniques.
Most kids cope with normal fears and worries with gentle support from their parent. As they grow, they get over fears they had at a younger age. Some kids have a harder time and need more help with fears.
Sometimes phobias can cause fear so intense it totally disables its victims. Phobias are among the most common of all mental illnesses, and they are usually the most successfully treated. Phobias are divided into categories according to the cause of the reaction and avoidance.
For the majority of people with undiagnosed or untreated anxiety disorder, there are many negative consequences, for both the individual and society. These include disability, reduced ability to work leading to loss of productivity, and a high risk of suicide.
Many phobias start because of a bad experience or panic attack related to a specific object or situation. Sometimes even seeing or hearing about a bad experience can be enough to trigger a phobia. Genetics or learned behavior. There may be a link between your specific phobia and the phobia or anxiety of your parents.
Phobias can limit your daily activities and may cause severe anxiety and depression. Complex phobias, such as agoraphobia and social phobia, are more likely to cause these symptoms. People with phobias often purposely avoid coming into contact with the thing that causes them fear and anxiety.
Understanding the phobia can help you overcome it and live a fulfilling life. Hippopotomonstrosesquippedaliophobia is one of the longest words in the dictionary, and ironically, it means the fear of long words. It originally was referred to as Sesquipedalophobia but was changed at some point to sound more intimidating.
A phobia is an identifiable and persistent fear that is excessive or unreasonable and is triggered by the presence or anticipation of a specific object or situation. Children and adolescents with one or more phobias consistently experience anxiety when exposed to the specific object or situation.
It is probably time to get professional help for your child's anxiety if: you feel it's not getting better or is getting worse, and efforts to tackle it yourself have not worked. you think it's slowing down their development or having a significant effect on their schooling or relationships. it happens very frequently.
People often use the term OCD casually, to describe someone who is neat and likes to be organized, but that's a vast understatement. Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is the diagnosis given when children have intrusive, persistent thoughts and compulsions that interfere with their ability to function.