Anxiety disorders are associated with decreased self-image, social isolation, inadequacy in social functions, and academic failures. Children often have physical symptoms such as headache, abdominal pain, and irritable bowel syndrome. There is evidence that it worsens over time if left untreated.
In a broad sense, anxiety can be defined as emotional restlessness with anticipation of danger. Anxiety is a normal emotion with a protective and adaptive function. Fears are often thought of as a normal reaction to a real or imagined danger. Anxiety is necessary for the continuation of the species. Temporary fear and anxiety are part of normal child development. These fears may be harm to self or others, intense worry about a certain situation, separation anxiety.
Some fears and anxieties are more common at certain ages. Babies are afraid of frightening stimuli in their immediate surroundings. From the twelfth month, fear of strangers, strange places and heights may begin. Preschoolers may fear being alone, the dark, animals, and imaginary creatures. School-age children fear supernatural forces, evaluative or social situations, natural disasters, illness and accidents. It is not always easy to distinguish between normal fear and anxiety, as childhood fears have a normal adaptive function. It is important that unrealistic fears or anxieties cause significant distress, academic or social impairment. The timing of the symptoms is also important (for example, mild separation anxiety makes children and adolescents think of different things.)
Anxiety is a warning sign, it informs about the approaching danger and provides to take precautions regarding the threat. Fear is also a warning sign similar to anxiety. Anxiety researchers distinguish between anxiety, fear, and phobias. Unlike fears, phobias are intense specific, persistent fear of a stimulus, accompanied by distress and avoidance. Phobic responses are disproportionate to the situation in question, unaffected by logical thinking, often outside the normal developmental range of fear (eg, fear of monsters in older children). Unlike fears and phobias, anxiety is more diffuse and non-specific. Fear is an external, definite or non-conflict response of known origin. Anxiety, on the other hand, is a response of unknown origin, internal, ambiguous and formed as a result of conflict. Some medical illnesses or psychiatric conditions may present with symptoms similar to anxiety disorders, or anxiety disorders may coexist with these diseases or conditions. This condition should be differentiated by a child and adolescent psychiatrist. Child and adolescent psychiatry specialist makes the diagnosis in children and adolescents.
