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.

How Emotions Help Us

Many people struggle with emotions, particularly if they’re experiencing high levels of depression, anxiety, anger, stress, and other difficult emotions. This is particularly hard when we live in a culture that highly values being rational or logical, and being “too emotional” is a negative thing. It’s easy to end up thinking that it’s better not to feel certain emotions (or at least not strongly), and emotions are something to be managed or coped with. 

However, emotions fulfill a number of functions:

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