Generalized Anxiety Disorder

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is the presence of worry and anxiety far out of proportion to the feared event. Children and adolescents with GAD may also experience restlessness, fatigue, difficulty concentrating, irritability, and muscle tension in addition to the ever-present worry and anxiety. To make a diagnosis of GAD, the psychologist or psychiatrist would expect the worry and anxiety to have been present for at least six months. Furthermore, the child or adolescent with GAD is likely to be overly concerned about the frequency or intensity of the worrying. Children may feel an inability to control their worrying, which at times interferes with their ability to pay attention in school or at work.

Children and adolescents with GAD tend to worry about their performance in sports and school, their health, or the safety and well-being of others. Perfectionism is frequently present in children and adolescents with GAD. They may not undertake tasks in which there is a risk of imperfect performance. In addition, these children tend to be overcritical of [Page 224]themselves and worry about meeting deadlines and abiding by the rules. Researchers believe that these children have fundamental distortions in threat perception and “have suggested that individuals with anxiety disorders tend to overestimate the likelihood and catastrophize the outcomes of dangerous events” (Flannery-Schroeder, 2004, p. 127).

In schools, children and adolescents with GAD may go unrecognized because the key characteristics (e.g., worry) of the disorder cannot be seen or do not disrupt the classroom. However, the debilitating nature of GAD interferes with learning and socialization. The school psychologist should help parents and teachers understand the behaviors (e.g., verbalizations about perfectionism, worry) that are associated with GAD. A comprehensive, multidisciplinary evaluation, if needed, should focus on the degree to which the symptoms of GAD interfere with school learning.