Insight on Anxiety

The popular SBS program, “Insight”, is celebrating its 10^th year, and has been airing some of their most popular episodes. On Tuesday, 25^th November, 2014, they showed the episode from 2010 on anxiety. It was one of the most popular episodes from 2010, perhaps not surprisingly given that anxiety affects approximately 16% of Australians in any single year.

One of the experts, Professor Ron Rapee, is the Director for the Centre for Emotional Health at Macquarie University.  Our Psychologist, Ivone Rebelo, worked with Ron in the Centre for Emotional Health for many years, including in the role of Clinic Manager. She gained a wealth of experience treating anxiety in children and adults. Below is a section of the transcript from Professor Rapee outlining the treatment:

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5 Common Signs of Child Anxiety

Whilst anxiety is a common mental health issue affecting 1 in 8 children, it often remains undetected and untreated, leading to unhelpful distress in children and higher prevalence rates of mental health issues in adolescence. Here are 5 common signs to help detect anxiety in children:

1. Children often complain of unexplained physical symptoms such as tummy aches, headaches, or muscle tension. These can be physical signs of anxiety and stress.

2. Some children find it difficult to go to certain places or do things due to high levels of anxiety, and so avoid a lot of situations. For example, children who are regularly in sick bay or refuse school, who avoid being away from their caregivers or who lack confidence in social settings. Sometimes avoidance can be specific, like fear of certain animals, heights, needles or vomiting.

3. Other children might experience difficulties with focus when trying to concentrate at school, or do homework because they are distracted by worry thoughts or physical symptoms of anxiety.

4. Commonly children experiencing anxiety have difficulties with sleep, particularly with falling or staying asleep on their own. Often children are unable to sleep because they are worried about various things.

5. Some children become more easily irritable, angry and on edge, particularly if they are worried or stressed about a number of things, such as school deadlines, friendships and family.

Our Psychologist, Ivone Rebelo, has 10 years of experience working with children and she is passionate about helping families better understand and manage child anxiety, supporting kids to be more confident in themselves.

From now till 31 December 2014, Ivone will be offering bulk-billing consultations for all child referrals from GPs under the Medicare Mental Health Treatment Plan. For further information or enquiries, please contact us on 02 8068 4361.

Functional Anxiety vs Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety is the experience of fear, stress or worry that occurs under certain threatening situations or conditions. It serves a signalling function that alerts us to potential danger, which is a natural human experience and essential for our survival.

From an evolutionary perspective, anxiety allows us to survive risky situations by alerting us to possible danger and mobilising our internal resources to face or escape the threat. Without the capacity to experience anxiety, we would become overly complacent and unaware of the possible threats in our environment.

Although anxiety is a shared and crucial human experience, some people may have a diagnosable anxiety disorder. The line between functional anxiety and anxiety disorders is crossed usually when there are:

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