Causes of Teen Anxiety

Biological Causes of Teen Anxiety

Biological research has shown that anxiety disorders, like many mental health disorders, have a genetic component and are therefore more prevalent among related than non-related individuals. Biological studies have also helped define different types of anxiety, such as Teen Specific Phobias, Teen Social Phobia, also called Teen Social Anxiety Disorder, Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and Generalized Anxiety Disorder. While such classifications and definitions are useful, particularly in the prescribing of medication, the idea that anxiety is solely a medical illness and that symptoms can and should be treated with medication oversimplifies the problem; specifically, some of the ensuing problems are:

• First, such a narrow approach to the problem and its solution does not facilitate understanding of what the patient is anxious about, an important aspect of successful treatment.
• Secondly, medication treatment without simultaneous psychotherapy puts the solution entirely outside of the patient, rather than empowering the patient to take control of his or her own life
• Finally, the classification of anxiety into such distinct categories ignores the fact that most individuals who suffer from anxiety experience it in many forms, not in a distinct and single manner
  

Temperament, an inborn, biological trait that is relatively consistent over an individual's lifetime, is a factor in the experience of anxiety (see The Importance Of Temperament) . Behavioral inhibition, an aspect of temperament, has been shown to negatively influence the outcome of social experiences. For example, children who are behaviorally inhibited are more prone to experience a difficult social experience as being traumatic, and the traumatic experience is more likely to influence the development of social phobias, which usually first appear in early adolescence.

Environmental Causes of Teen Anxiety

There are various environmental factors (factors which originate outside the child) that affect a child's level of anxiety, two of which are caregiver style and vicarious learning.

Caregiver styles
Studies have shown that parenting or caregiver styles (coupled with offspring temperaments) can influence the development of child and adolescent anxiety. Anxious caregivers tend to

• Exhibit less warmth toward their children
• Grant less autonomy
• Tend to be more critical
• Model high control needs and fear
• Elevate the child's own concern about risk

An anxious caregiver may effect the child's own anxiety level in several ways, such as the following:

• The adolescent may come to believe that he or she is not competent to handle new situations
• Learning may be reduced by the lack of exposure to novel situations

Vicarious Learning

Recent studies have indicated that anxiety and phobias can be learned through early observation. Studies have related primarily to the effects of children learning from their parents, however, there is some indication that susceptible children can even learn to be fearful or anxious from watching movies and TV. Timidity, or behavioral inhibition, increases the child's vulnerability to learning anxious behaviors.

Evolution

Anxiety related to specific and social phobias, as well as OCD, are not random in nature, but are usually related to objects and situations that were dangerous at one time in our evolutionary history. For example, specific phobias are usually related to heights, snakes, spiders, and the like. Social phobias seem to be related to the dominance and submissive hierarchies found among animals (For more on this, see Contributing Factors To Teen Depression). OCD type obsessions are most often related to dirt, contamination, and safety, and OCD type compulsions are most often about cleaning and checking for danger.

Understanding the evolutionary relationship between former survival needs and today's phobias and fears may be helpful in gaining a degree of understanding and objectivity about human anxiety. It should be noted, however, that intellectual understanding does not usually alter the emotional impact of mental disorders. A new experience is usually required in order for change to take place.

Psychological Causes of Teen Anxiety

Anxiety usually has both conscious and unconscious components. Conscious anxieties are exemplified by phobias of specific objects (spiders) and events (giving a speech). Anxieties based on unconscious factors are more complex, as well as more difficult to understand and resolve. In most cases, anxiety has both conscious and unconscious components. As an example, Laurie, in the case described above, was conscious of her urge to shout an obscenity in the school library, and of the ritual of book counting. Many sessions of therapy were required, however, before she began to understand the unconscious aspects of her obsessive thoughts and compulsive behavior. The attention she was beginning to receive from boys who found her attractive had provoked unconscious fears related to the prolonged sexual abuse she had endured as a young child. Laurie's understandable need to prevent the painful memories from surfacing had to be brought to consciousness and fully processed in a safe environment before she began to experience relief and symptom reduction. It was also not coincidental that Laurie's OCD symptoms emerged in the library, a place of quiet where activity and conversation could not completely drown out her painful and repressed memories.

• Treatment of Teen Anxiety
• Teen Anxiety Resources & References