Children who persistently or frequently experience high anxiety need help, says psychologist Jennie Hudson, Professor and Director of the Centre for Emotional Health, at Sydney’s Macquarie University.

“There has been a tendency to believe kids are going to grow out of [their anxiety]”, she said. In the past, anxiety in children was believed to be normal part of growing up. In fact, in the first Australian Child and Adolescent Mental Health survey in 1998, the question of anxiety disorders in children was not included at all.

But the reality is, anxious children grow into anxious teenagers and then into anxious adults, and by then it is not only harder to treat it is also too late to reverse much of the negative impact this condition has had on these people’s lives, she explained in an interview following her presentation on the subject at HealthEd’s Mental Health in General Practice evening seminar held recently in Sydney.