Publications - Anxiety Disorders

Children and teens face unequal mental health realities, by Marisa Fernandez, Yahoo News, Oct 12 2021.

“n the weeks after the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, at least 55% of children felt more "sad, depressed, or unhappy," compared to 25% of adults, according to a new report out Monday from the Child Mind Institute. Why it matters: The data offers a glimpse at the differences in children's early psych0logical responses as researchers work to tease out the pandemic's potential long-term effects on the incoming generation's mental health and developmental skills. ”

Anxiety, depression fluctuated with COVID-19 waves: Study, by Kiara Alfonseca, ABC News, Oct 10 2021.

“The COVID-19 pandemic has had a major impact on the mental health of the nation, according to a new study published in the Center for Disease Control and Prevention's weekly journal, MMWR. The CDC said that social isolation, coronavirus-related deaths and stress weighed heavy on Americans, forcing many to confront new mental health challenges. ”

Why It’s So Hard to Find a Therapist Who Takes Insurance, by Andrea Petersen, The Wall Street Journal, Oct 5 2021.

“Finding a therapist who takes insurance was tough before the pandemic. Now, therapists and patients say, an increase in the need for mental-health care is making the search even harder. Especially in big cities such as Los Angeles, New York and Washington, D.C., demand for mental-health care is so strong that many experienced therapists don’t accept any insurance plans, they say. They can easily fill their practices with patients who would pay out of pocket, they add. Therapists who do take insurance are often booked up. And in many smaller towns and rural areas, there are few mental-health professionals at all. Finding a provider who takes insurance, or lowering your rates in other ways, is possible but often takes legwork that can be draining when you are already grappling with mental-health issues. About 34% of people with private insurance said they had difficulty finding a therapist who would accept their coverage, according to a 2016 survey—the most recent data available—of more than 3,100 participants conducted by the National Alliance on Mental Illness, a national mental-health advocacy group. By comparison, 9% said they had difficulty finding an in-network primary-care provider.  Office visits to mental-health providers are more than five times more likely to be out of network than are visits to primary-care providers, according to a 2019 report from Milliman, a consulting firm, which analyzed insurance-claims data. In 2017, 17.2% of mental-health office visits were out of network, compared with 3.2% of primary-care visits, the Milliman report found. ”

How to Detect Your Child’s Emotional Distress Before the School’s AI Does, by Julie Jargon, The Wall Street Journal, Sep 18 2021.

“School districts use artificial-intelligence software that can scan student communications and web searches on school-issued devices—and even devices that are logged in via school networks—for signs of suicidal ideation, violence against fellow students, bullying and more. Included in the scans are emails and chats between friends, as well as student musings composed in Google Docs or Microsoft Word. Many school districts have used monitoring software over the past three years to prevent school shootings, but it has evolved to become a tool to spot a range of mental-health issues, including anxiety, depression and eating disorders. School administrators say such surveillance is more important than ever as students return to the classroom after 18 months of pandemic-related stress, uncertainty and loss. Critics say it raises questions about privacy, misuse and students’ ability to express feelings freely or search for answers. ”

Good Anxiety Does Exist. Here's How You Can Benefit From It, by Meghan Keane and Claire Marie Schneider, NPR, Sep 9 2021.

“Anxiety can feel like the enemy. However it shows up — a tightness in the chest, a knot in the stomach — it's easy to want to obliterate those feelings.  But according to Wendy Suzuki, that might not be the best approach.  "Anxiety evolved to help protect us," says Suzuki, a professor of neural science and psychology at the Center for Neural Science at New York University. "We need to recalibrate our level of anxiety to get it back to that level where it is superprotective for us."  Suzuki wants us to make friends with our anxiety and reap all the gifts it can offer.  In her new book, Good Anxiety: Harnessing the Power of the Most Misunderstood Emotion, Suzuki outlines strategies to turn that sinking feeling into something productive. Anxiety, she says, is trying to give us information about what we appreciate and what we value in our lives. ”

6 Tips For Coping With COVID Anxiety This Fall And Winter, by April Fulton, NPR, Sep 4 2021.

“As the days get shorter and nights longer, the delta variant of the coronavirus is still very much with us, sad to say. It's already clear the next couple of seasons won't be the "life as usual" we all hoped for.  "People have a lot of frustration. People have been doing this a long time, and they thought by now things would be in a different position," says Vickie Mays, a psychology professor at the University of California, Los Angeles.  We're likely to see pockets of outbreaks and increased restrictions again with every surge in local cases and hospitalizations, says Dr. Preeti Malani, an infectious disease professor at the University of Michigan. And that's leaving some of us feeling a little anxious, to say the least. ”

Grief-induced anxiety: Calming the fears that follow loss, by Jessica DuLong, CNN, Jul 18 2021.

“Millions of Americans are grieving loved ones taken by Covid-19. Yet even outside of a pandemic — with its staggering losses of lives, homes, economic security and normalcy — grief is hard work.  “The funny thing about grief is that no one ever feels like they’re doing it the right way,” said therapist Claire Bidwell Smith, author of “Anxiety: The Missing Stage of Grief.” But there is no right way, she insisted. The only “wrong” way is to not do it.  What often trips people up is misattributing the sensations of grief-related anxiety to some unrelated cause. “Probably 70% of my clients have gone into the hospital for a panic attack following a big loss,” Smith said. ”

Just one night of sleep loss harms your well-being, new study finds, by Sarah Molano, CNN, Jul 9 2021.

“One night of sleep loss is enough to disrupt your day-to-day mental and physical well-being, according to a new study, and consecutive days of sleep loss can increase these negative impacts.  “Consecutive sleep loss was associated with decreases in positive emotions, increases in negative emotions, and greater frequency of severity of physical symptoms,” said Soomi Lee, lead author of the study, which published Monday in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine.  Adults should get at least seven hours of sleep per night, but 1 in 3 of them don’t, according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The negative effects of poor sleep have been well documented, with its occurrence linked to higher risk of a variety of conditions such as cardiovascular disease, diabetes, obesity and, in another recent study, dementia. ”

How A Hospital And A School District Teamed Up To Help Kids In Emotional Crisis, by Rhitu Chatterjee, NPR, Jun 11 2021.

“The concerning rise in mental health issues noticed by school administrators mirrors national trends. Roughly 1 in 5 U.S. children meet criteria for a mental health disorder, and the rate of suicide attempts among youth has risen over the past decade, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  Around the country, most kids who have mental health issues don't get treatment. There's a shortage of providers who work with children and it can take months to get an appointment.  "The wait times on an average to see a mental health specialist on an emergency basis is somewhere between two to three months, and for regular basis is up to 12 months, which is an unacceptable wait time," says Dr. Ujjwal Ramtekkar, a child and adolescent psychiatrist at Nationwide Children's Hospital. ”

Mental health services struggled to meet increased demand during pandemic, study finds, by Tori Powell, CBS News, May 1 2021.

“The study analyzed data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that found that 27% more adults in the U.S. reported symptoms of anxiety or depression during the pandemic, between April 2020 and February 2021, compared to in 2019. ER visits for drug overdoses increased by 36% and ER visits for suicide attempts rose by 26% in the past year compared to the same time period of the year earlier.  ”

Special Report: As U.S. schools shuttered, student mental health cratered, Reuters finds, by Benjamin Lesser, Reuters, Mar 19 2021.

“Reuters surveyed school districts nationwide in February to assess the mental health impacts of full or partial school shutdowns. The districts, large and small, rural and urban, serve more than 2.2 million students across the United States. Of the 74 districts that responded, 74% reported multiple indicators of increased mental health stresses among students. More than half reported rises in mental health referrals and counseling. Nearly 90% of responding districts cited higher rates of absenteeism or disengagement, metrics commonly used to gauge student emotional health. The lack of in person education was a driver of these warning signs of trouble, more than half of districts said. ”

Disruptive Behavior: Why It’s Often Misdiagnosed, by Child Mind Institute, Feb 9 2021.

“Most children have occasional temper tantrums or emotional outbursts, but when kids repeatedly lash out, are defiant, or can’t control their tempers, it can impair their functioning in school and cause serious family turmoil.  The first challenge in helping a child manage his behavior better is to understand why they’re doing what they’re doing. In the same way that a headache or a fever can be caused by many things, frequent outbursts — which clinicians call “emotional dysregulation”— can reflect a number of different underlying issues.  It’s easy to jump to the conclusion that a child who’s pushing or hitting or throwing tantrums is angry, defiant or hostile. But in many cases disruptive, even explosive behavior stems from anxiety or frustration that may not be apparent to parents or teachers. ”

Lawmakers push mental health days for kids amid pandemic, by Sopia Eppolitio, Associated Press, Jan 30 2021.

“State lawmakers are increasingly seeking more support for kids. This year, legislation proposed in Utah and Arizona would add mental or behavioral health to the list of reasons students can be absent from class, similar to staying out with a physical illness. Similar laws have passed in Oregon, Maine, Colorado and Virginia in the past two years. ”

Pandemic's toll on mental health accentuated in cities, by Kanwal Syed and Naitian Zhou, NBC News, Nov 23 2020.

“Covid-19 hasn't been the only catastrophe sweeping the country this year.  Health experts say Americans are experiencing symptoms of anxiety and depression made worse by pandemic-related stressors, including job loss, evictions, remote learning, travel restrictions and limits on gathering.  The contentious presidential election, increased racial tensions and natural disasters, in addition to Covid-19, added to Americans' stressors, said Dr. Joshua Gordon, director of the National Institute of Mental Health. ”

How To Help Your Kids Reframe Their Anxiety — And Reclaim Their Superpowers, by Kavitha Cardoza, NPR, Nov 16 2020.

“Every child feels anxious at times — but for some, that feeling persists and interferes with friendships and schoolwork. It can cause children to be fearful, worried, irritable and angry. And there are physical symptoms: Kids can feel tired and have headaches, stomachaches and trouble sleeping. Anxiety is one of the most common mental health concerns for children. ”