James Donaldson on Mental Health - How Anxiety Affects Teenagers

How is anxiety different in teenagers?

Anxious teenagers are different from anxious children.

At each stage of development, kids have different worries and vulnerabilities.

Younger children are prone to be anxious about external things — like animals or insects, the dark, monsters under the bed, or something bad happening to mom and dad.

But teenagers are more likely to be worried about themselves — their performance in school or sports, how they are perceived by others, the changes in their bodies.

Some anxious teenagers have been anxious for many years by the time they reach adolescence.

Maybe parents have been aware of it, but the child functioned well despite their distress, so nothing was done about it.

Or the child was treated, and things got better.

But as more is expected of them, in middle and high school, and as they develop more focus on their peers, the anxiety can resurface and become more severe.

And some teens who weren’t anxious children develop adolescent-onset kinds of anxiety , including social anxiety and panic attacks .