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Anxiety In The Family 'Is Anxiety Inherited'
It has been a well-known fact for many years that restless parents could pass anxiety disorders on to their children. Although this truth is well known, no one is prepared to say yes to this issue "is stress inherited". But now, a recent research by the experts at Johns Hopkins Children's Centre, came up with the conclusion that a family-based program where parents and kids are treated together, can aid in eliminating the symptoms and risks of anxiousness among these kids.
Each one could possibly get anxious every once in awhile, but when the problem starts taking over one's life, the problem is then called anxiety disorder. It can be really stressful and stop individuals from living their lives fully. Some individuals with anxiety disorder might also have fears and develop panic attacks. For the study purposes, the Hopkins investigators looked over 40 children from the ages between 7 and 12 years. The kids were not clinically determined to have anxiety disorder themselves but all of them had at least one parent who was diagnosed with the problem.
What other proof do we really need to answer the question "is anxiety inherited". Investigators randomly split the participants into two categories, with 20 of the kids and their families taking part in an 8-week cognitive behavioural therapy program, while the other 20 were put on a waiting list and did not receive any treatment during the period of the study, but were offered therapy one year later. The CBT program, that consisted of one-hour-long weekly sessions, was centering on an improvement of problem-solving skills, training about panic attacks, and also helped parents discover and change behaviours thought to contribute to anxiety in the children.
The main investigator of the study, Dr. Golda Ginsburg, PH.D., a child psychiatrist at Hopkins Children's Center and an associate teacher of psychiatry at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, said that according to the figures gathered by the analysts, the kids of parents with an anxiety disorder are around seven times more prone to develop the disorder themselves, and around 65 per cent of kids who live with an anxious parent meet the criteria for panic attacks.
The results of the research discovered that within a period of 12 months, 30 per cent of the children that did not participate in the treatment plan, had developed an anxiety disorder, in comparison to none of the children who were engaged in the family based treatment program. A 40 per cent decrease in anxiety symptoms in the year after the therapy program were independently reported by parents together with investigators who analyzed the behaviour of the kids and their parents. There was no drop of anxiety symptoms noticed among kids on the waiting list.
The parental behaviors personalized with therapy program included overprotection, extreme criticism and excessive expression of worry and anxiety in front of the children. The program focused on childhood risk factors such as avoiding anxiety-provoking circumstances and anxious thoughts. As outlined by a recent article in The New England Journal of Medicine, it is deterrence but not treatment, of childhood anxiousness, that is of a primary importance, because anxiety disorder influence one in every 5 children in the USA, but very often are left unacknowledged. If not addressed in time, the dilemma can cause depression, substance abuse and poor academic performance all through childhood years and way into adulthood.
Results of the study will be publicized in the June issue of the Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology. The research was financed by the US government's National Institute of Mental Health. So "is stress inherited", yes. Can we change the pattern of behavior yes!
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