Heather Bedard, C.H.E.
Anxiety. It’s a terrible emotion that makes one feel a loss of control and inability to think. It comes with a sense of impending doom and fear for the future. Many people feel like they can’t control it, and for others it drives their day-to-day life. For still others, they feel like they can’t function with their anxiety and turn to the pharmaceutical industry for answers. To make matters worse, many children struggle with anxiety and are put on medication to cope with it. If you or your children struggle with anxiety, there are a few things that you should know. These things will probably not be told to you by your doctor or psychiatrist. I would actually be surprised if they knew or admitted them. The first, is that one of the most widely spread myths about mental health, the “chemical imbalance” idea is simply that, an idea. Ronald Pies, the former editor of the Psychiatric Times says, “In truth, the “chemical imbalance” notion was always a kind of urban legend – never a theory seriously propounded by well-informed psychiatrists.”[1] It was a “little white lie.”[2]
The second thing you should know, is that while many people believe that psychological disorders run in the family, this is not the case on a genetics level. People in the same family can struggle with similar disorders. However, this is actually due to learned behavior. In a study of 398 children, 108 of which had a received a diagnosis of one or more anxiety disorders, the rate of anxiety disorder increased with age. 14.1% of children younger than 9 years old had disorders compared with 51.8% of children older than 15 years old. It didn’t matter if the children were male or female.
One of the most startling finds was that if the two parents of the child did not have an anxiety disorder, the rate was lower. The rate of anxiety disorders increased if one parent had an anxiety disorder, and even more if both parents did. Furthermore, if the parent was the same sex as the child with anxiety the risk grew even greater.[3]
The authors write, “It is likely that learning and modeling play a significant role. This theory has been suggested before by observational and experimental studies demonstrating that children model parents’ fearful responses and that overprotective parenting increases the likelihood of anxiety in children. Our finding is also in line with a children-of-twins study, which concluded that transmission of anxiety from parents to children is primarily environmental. Although the current study is the first to suggest that the transmission of anxiety is at least partially specific to the same-sex parent-offspring pairs, evidence exists that other complex features, including obesity, physical activity levels, and suicidal behavior, may be more often transmitted to the offspring from the same-sex parent than from the opposite-sex parent.”
While this subject is way more nuanced than the time I have in this particular article, these are at least some good things to keep in mind when navigating the anxiety issue. Our children learn much more than learning how to walk and talk from us. Francine Rosenberg, a psychologist who specializes in anxiety, says that children learn how to think and behave by watching their parents, and then they imitate what they see.[4] She advises parents to face their fears and work on them, bringing the child along on the journey with them.
Anxiety is not a disease to be managed with drugs, but it is contagious, and children can catch it if we’re not alert to walk them through it. Therapist Debbie Pincus says, "If I get anxious about my kid getting anxious, I'm going … to do something reactive — which is just anxiety and fear in action."
You can run anxiety right out of your family. If you notice that your children share your same fears or reactions, you can also choose to teach them how to face their fear and give them a safe space to learn to fight them.
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[1]Pies, R.W. “Psychiatry’s new brainmind and the legend of “Chemical Imbalance.” Psychiatric Times July 11, 2011 [2]Pies R.W. “Nuances, Narratives, and the ‘Chemical Imbalance’ Debate in Psychiatry.” Medscape April 15, 2014 [3]Pavlova B, Bagnell A, Cumby J et al. “Sex-Specific Transmission of Anxiety Disorders From Parents to Offspring.” JAMA Netw Open 2022 Jul;5)7):e2220919 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamanetworkopen/fullarticle/2794157 Posted onSeptember 7, 2022CategoriesChildren's Health, Mental Health [4] https://www.chicagotribune.com/lifestyles/sc-fam-0414-inherited-fears-20150407-story.html