Why are so many kids facing anxiety?

The pandemic’s lingering effects and chronic screen time make it hard for anxious kids to stay in school, an expert says, but parents can help by “praising instances of bravery.”

For children and adolescents who have anxiety, going to school can feel like a nightmare. Anxiety is the most common mental health disorder in the United States for adults. And since the COVID-19 pandemic, anxiety that interferes with daily life has risen in young people, making everyday activities like going to school and socializing difficult and more stressful.

In Massachusetts, the upward trend in anxiety-related disorders has led to more students missing school, sometimes labeled chronic absenteeism or school refusal. This leaves parents, families, and caregivers scrambling for solutions, like education accommodations and mental health counseling—all of which are limited, with long waiting lists to even get in front of a health care provider.

“The mechanisms underlying anxiety—like intolerance of uncertainty, changes, and distress—all went up during 2020, and they haven’t come back down to pre-COVID levels,” says Alyssa Farley, a Boston University research assistant professor of psychological and brain sciences.

“This raises the question about whether children have really recovered from the experiences of those years.”

Farley is a clinician and supervisor at BU’s Center for Anxiety & Related Disorders (CARD) Child & Adolescent program, where she and her colleagues treat children ages 3 to 17 for various clinical anxiety disorders, such as separation anxiety, phobias, and selective mutism, which is when a child will not speak in certain settings—commonly school—but will speak comfortably in other environments. The clinic also offers guidance for caregivers to help kids succeed.

“I think a lot of the things that we recommend can feel counterintuitive to parents,” Farley says. “For example, instead of accommodating avoidance or enabling children to escape a situation that’s causing them anxiety, we say to gradually work with them to face their fears.”

Farley wishes there was better understanding of anxiety both at home and in schools, since it can be overlooked until a child starts missing school.

Here, Farley explains why anxiety in children is interfering with school, why it’s so difficult for parents and kids to access resources, and how to support an anxious child: