Social Anxiety Treatments for Children

Social Anxiety Treatments for Children

Avoidance of social anxiety problems will significantly interfere with the quality of youngsters’ lives, often impairing their school performance and attendance, as well as their ability to socialize with peers and to develop and maintain relationships. The onset of Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) peaks in adolescence when establishing and managing friendships independently is a crucial part of healthy development.

Avoidance keeps social anxiety disorder going. It prevents you from becoming more comfortable in social situations and learning how to cope.

Research supported by NIMH and by industry has shown that there are two effective forms of treatment available for social phobia: certain medications and a specific form of short-term psychotherapy called cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT). Researchers in the field estimate that 75 to 90 percent of the visits to primary care physicians somehow have to do with stress. NLP and Hypnotherapy are natural methods that can be used to eliminate stress at the source.

CBT

CBT is a type of psychotherapy. People with social anxiety disorders are taught new ways of responding to situations that trigger fear and physical symptoms.[A] CBT is a method which helps you learn, very specifically, how to handle your anxiety symptoms differently, so that you get more of the life you want. That’s the kind of treatment you find in the self help materials available here. CBT is a form of therapy that has been successfully used to treat a wide variety of anxiety disorders. First, therapy helps individuals approach and subsequently overcome their fears by changing their unhelpful thought patterns.

Medications for Social Anxiety

Medications for this and other phobic disorders have been useful in two contexts. First, the minor tranquilizers or anxiolytics are excellent means of treating anxiety symptoms. Medications require relatively little effort on the part of the patient. There is the possibility of side effects, but these are usually easy to minimize.

Sources:

[A] http://www.columbia-socialanxiety.org/resources.html
[B] http://www.mentalhealth.com/rx/p23-an03.html
[C] http://www.drexel.edu/coas/psychology/anxietyresearch/socialanxietydisorder.htm

The Social Anxiety problem = Fear

Fear can be a signal for us to pay attention. Yet, we can become immobilized by our fear if we fail to feel it and acknowledge it. Fear of symptoms can create a vicious cycle: as people with social phobia worry about experiencing the symptoms, the greater their chances of developing the symptoms. Fear of being criticized or embarrassed makes some people avoid certain ordinary social situations—like public speaking, performing, going to parties, eating in restaurants, writing in front of others, or using public restrooms. People with a social phobia feel so threatened by certain social situations that they either avoid them completely or suffer terribly when they cannot avoid them.