Anxiety Disorders in Childhood
INTRODUCTION of Anxiety Disorders in Childhood
Anxiety is an emotion that arises when the person feels in danger, whether real or not the threat. It is a normal and adaptive response to threats real or imagined more or less diffuse body prepares to react to a situation of danger. Fears become the kid’s nanny when he starts to walk away from the mother and begins to explore the world alone. The three types of fears more firmly established in humans are:
1. Fear of animals, reminiscent of the evolutionary fear the predators.
2. Fear of physical harm, a remnant of the atavistic fear of the dangers that can be found in nature.
3. The fear of separation, which operates in line with the previous ones and allows keeping small children close to their mothers protected from hazardous environment.
Sometimes those anxiety responses did not play an adaptive shoot in a completely uncontrolled and cause suffering for children in the experiment.
THE FEAR IN CHILDREN
When anxiety refers to specific stimuli, there is talk of fear itself. Most of the fears many children experience mild, transient and associated with a particular age who are overcome spontaneously in the course of development. Fear is a primitive alarm system that helps the child to avoid potentially dangerous situations. Fear of separation is the first line of defense if it breaks, then take action to animal fears and physical damage. From this perspective, fear responses are instinctive and universal, without prior learning, which aim at protecting children from different dangers. Innate fears can be grouped into five general categories:
1. Intense fear stimuli.
2. Fear of the unknown stimuli, such as fear of strangers.
3. Fear of lack of incentives, such as the dark.
4. Fear to stimuli that are potentially hazardous to the human species over time, such as separation, heights, snakes or other wildlife.
5. Fear of social interactions with strangers.
CLASSIFICATION OF ANXIETY DISORDERS IN CHILDREN
Anxiety disorders in childhood can be classified into three main sections which appear in others as we see in the list below:
1. Phobic disorders: Phobias specific phobia disorders and school avoidance.
2. Anxiety disorders without avoidance: separation anxiety and excessive anxiety.
3. Other Anxiety Disorders: Obsessive-compulsive disorder and mixed anxiety and depression.
