Therapy Options For Children With Social Anxiety Disorder

Social Anxiety Disorder can be a very big obstacle for many children. It inhibits their ability to perform in school and socially. It can lead to depression and scar the child long into adulthood and often times is never realized as anything more than a harmless sense of being shy. Once diagnosed there’s two primary forms of treatment, the first being therapy and second being medication. This article will focus primary therapy.

The primary goal of therapy is to change many of the negative feelings and thoughts that help create the anxiety. One way that may be used during therapy is the practice of a step by step exposure to the object or situation that is feared. An example of this would be a child who is afraid of talking to adults may at first role play going into a space that may have a lot of adults and slowly working up to ordering food at a restaurant. This is done in very small steps. This is very difficult but possible.

Sometimes in addition of exposing the child, it may be necessary to reward the child for a first step. If for example the child is afraid to raise their hand in class to ask a question, they would be given a small task to complete. If they start by asking the teacher a question after class and complete the task, they would be rewarded with ice cream or a trip to the movies.

There’s positives and negatives in using therapy as a treatment. Since many times there is no use of medication the worry of side effects is alleviated. Another positive is that the child may feel a great sense of accomplishment when they finish their treatment.

Unfortunately there are very few studies of the affects of this kind of therapy on children, although there’s a lot of positive research in this field in terms of adults. Another negative is that fact that this form of treatment is very difficult to complete, perhaps too difficult for some children.

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