Separation anxiety disorder in children
Introduction
Anxiety is a normal response to stress, concern or threat, but when it is very intense, long -lasting or disproportionate to the circumstance, anxiety disorder is called.
There are various types of anxiety disorders: for example, generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, panic anxiety disorder or obsessive -compulsive disorder. By affecting the humor, thought and behavior of the person, the presence of an anxiety disorder can hinder everyday life at home, work or school, as well as social relationships.
In this essay, it has been proposed.
Developing
Anxiety is a basic emotion that all human beings experience, the greatest knowledge of anxiety disorders in adult life has roots in childhood. Anxiety disorders cause exaggerated concerns and fears, and also changes in child’s behavior, as well as in their sleep, food and/or mood patterns. Getting very nervous and anxious the first times they separate from their parents having cases where the child gradually surpasses it while others affect him in his day to day.
Anxiety is a normal and adaptive response to real or less diffuse threats that prepares the body to react to a danger situation. If this anxiety refers to specific stimuli, it is properly spoken of fear. Most children experience many mild, transient fears associated with a certain age that are overcome spontaneously in the course of development.
Fear constitutes a primitive alarm system that helps the child avoid potentially dangerous situations;Pain on the other hand, warns of immediate damage. The fear of separation is the first line of defense;If this breaks, then fears and physical damage come into action. Fears are universal and vary depending on the different ages of the child. Only the fear of strangers (social fear) can subsist in adult life in the form of shyness.
The etiology of anxiety disorders is largely unknown. The studies carried out only partly the acquisition (and especially the maintenance of phobic disorders). Very little is known about the rest of anxiety disorders. The child’s psychological vulnerability facilitates the learning experiences of these disorders. However, some studies indicate that they could give for stressful causes by their family environment such as: the separation of parents, to have one of their parents with a chronic disease, lack of warmth in the family environment, due to the infused fear that mothers aboutProtectors or the social environment of the child in school: bullying or harassment;etc.
In other cases they are also based on the inheritance;Where a child suffers from it and this trait is greater for having a relative with anxiety disorder;In his way of seeing things (psychological factor) the child feels unable to solve his problems, he is responsible for his failures, he has excessive uncontrollable unrealistic concerns that make him develop and maintain anxiety.
Echeburúa (2002) mentions that: “All these external and internal factors, among others, crystallize within the family and can develop with greater increase in society itself.”(P.72). Explaining that it forms a certain degree of vulnerability of each child regarding their anxiety disorder.
The symptoms associated with anxiety cover the specific components (cognitive, affective, conceptual and physiological) that are integrated and manifested in the psychobiological aspect, that is to say in the total organism;Heads, diarrhea, inability to relax, tension, scare,cloudy mind, inability to remember important things, interrupted phrases, trembling hands and stuttering among other symptoms.
It is difficult to separate a cognitive anxiety from a physics because they usually present together or at least take to appear the symptoms of physical anxiety when the cognitive advances to an episode of nervousness or an anxious crisis which is very common.
Cognitive anxiety can be caused by emotional and environmental aspects, and all these affect the brain in different ways. If a person has anxiety symptoms that do not fit the common aspect, it is very possible that he has developed an accompanying pathology. Depression and social phobia are a consequence of the behavior that the patient adopts by the disease.
The lack of attention can be due to various reasons, for anxiety, for depression, due to sudden changes in their life such as the divorce of their parents, which can lead to learning problems or can even be complicated because the child suffersHyperactivity disorder and attention deficit.
The separation of parents is always a bitter and painful experience for children, although it does not have to be a traumatic experience on its own. Instead, consider that the hostilities and bitterness that often accompany these processes if they can leave sequelae in the children in the long term, the separation involves a very strong emotional impact and that if they do not help them handle and face it properly, it cangive rise to important problems at academic, behavioral, social and even affect both mental and physical health.
Gives life.Clark, Aaron T.Beck (2010) mentions that “fear, anxiety and concern, however, are not exclusive domain of disaster and other experiences that entail vital risk.”(P.twenty). The high frequency of confusion, cloudy mind and inability to control thinking indicates that cognitive imbalance is an important aspect of generalized anxiety disorder.
The therapeutic techniques used in the treatment of childhood anxiety disorders are very similar to those of adults. More than in conceptual aspects, the differences lie in the adaptation of the procedure to the age and characteristics of the child, as well as the most managerial role of the therapist and/or copeter.
There are techniques used in the treatment of childhood anxiety disorders, relaxation is an adequate therapeutic technique in anxiety control.
This procedure tries to use help to teach adaptive behaviors practiced repeatedly and resort to extinction procedures to eliminate anxiety.
Another technique is the emotional stages are specifically in the application of a game scenario of the gradual exhibition live to the feared stimuli, the mental representation of emotional images inhibitor of anxiety (heroes of films and the observation of a model) as wellas for the social and material reinforcement of the correct behaviors.
self-instructs are also the most used cognitive technique in children’s anxiety disorders, the objective of this procedure is to modify the child’s internal dialogue to facilitate the coping of a certain task or situation;This training is nothing but the process of teaching children to speak to themselves in another way.
Psychopharmaceuticals do not constitute a first -line treatment in the therapy of anxiety disorders in childhood and yet they are widely used in the clinic ranging from antidepressants to anxiolytics that are drugs of common use especially in cases of excessive anxietyAnd, in general, in the case of nonspecific anxiety, these drugs can reduce anxiety while the psychological techniques of choice are launched.
Nicolás Alejandro Hernández Lira, Juan de la Cruz Sánchez (2007) states that “anxiety basically consists of an anticipatory response of some threat (external or internal), characterized by affective sensations of nervousness, tension, apprehension and alarm, accompanied by behavioral manifestationsvisible (motor restlessness) and physiological changes associated with hyperactivation of the autonomic nervous system (tachycardia, sweating, etc.) ”(P. 248). A medicine or tutor will be recommended (usually with the approval and participation of the child or adolescent, according to their level of development)
Conclusions
Separation anxiety is undoubtedly the most disorder for everyday life in childhood. Separation anxiety is secondary accompanied at least two thirds of multiple phobias, excessive anxiety or major depression.
Also excessive anxiety can overcome the avoidance disorder, which is, on the other hand the clinical picture very little known today.
In short, childhood anxiety disorders tend to be little specific and often appear superimposed in practice in the form of a mixed depressive global clinical picture.
Bibliographic references
- Echeburúa .O (2002) .Anxiety disorders in childhood .Madrid, Spain: Pyramid Editions.
- Gives life.Clark, Aaron T.Beck (2010). Cognitive Therapy for Anxiety Disorders, Spain: Editorial De Bruwer. S.A
- Nicolás Alejandro Hernández Lira, Juan de la Cruz Sánchez Sánchez (2007). Cognitive Psychotherapy Manual for Health Disorders. Amertown International s.A
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