Transcendental Meditation can potentially play an enormous role in inoculating children against anxiety and the problems that grow out of chronic anxiety.

Transcendental Meditation promotes relaxation and positive mental health in children and adolescents
by American Association of Physicians and Scientists Practicing the Transcendental Meditation Technique
24 April 2008

Questions relating to anxiety in children and adolescents

are answered by Dr William Stixrud, a faculty member at Children's National Medical Center, in Washington, DC.

Question:
Everyone gets nervous about things, but my daughter’s really sensitive. She has anxiety attacks when math tests come up, and almost anything can set her off. Is this normal?

Dr Stixrud:
Anxiety is very common in children. In fact there are many, many kids with anxiety disorders who are not diagnosed because people don’t take anxiety in children sufficiently seriously. They should take it seriously, because anxiety is the gateway to other mental health problems, in the sense that if you look at people who are depressed as adults, almost all of them have histories of anxiety in childhood.

One of the top experts on stress in the world thinks that depression is the result of a worn-out stress response. In other words, if you’re anxious a lot as a kid, and your stress response—or fight-or flight response—is constantly trying to protect you and filling your brain and your body with stress hormones, that can work for a while. But eventually, the stress response system gets worn out, and when it gets worn out, you give up.

Most anxiety disorders in children—whether it’s a panic disorder, a separation anxiety disorder, or a generalized anxiety disorder—are transient, which means they go away. But in a sizeable proportion of kids with anxiety problems, they return; and again, the best predictor of later mental health problems is anxiety during childhood.

That’s why the experts say, “You’ve got to treat it.” If you’ve got an anxious kid, you’ve got to treat it, not only to alleviate his suffering, but because if you don’t treat it, it’s likely to get worse. If you can effectively treat their anxiety problems, you significantly decrease the likelihood that they’re going to develop depression, or addictive behaviors, or other kinds of mental health problems. So, treating anxiety is very important.

Question:
What kind of treatments would help my daughter?

Dr. Stixrud:
One of the best documented ways to address anxiety in children is to teach them to deeply relax themselves. I think that Maharishi's Transcendental Meditation becomes a very important tool, not only in the treatment of children with anxiety problems, but also in the prevention of anxiety disorders. This is because anxiety disorders basically reflect a fight-or-flight response that’s hyperactive. And we know from research that over time, the practice of Transcendental Meditation increasingly normalizes—or makes more efficient—that fight-or-flight response.

Question:
Isn’t some amount of stress good for us?

Dr. Stixrud:
It’s not that we want people to never be anxious. When there’s something threatening, you want to have some anxiety; you want to feel some stress, because that’s what makes you run away from a predator or a dangerous situation. Nature programs us to be able to deal with danger through the fight-or-flight response.

What we want is an optimal stress response, so that when we’re in a real emergency, we can deal with it. But then it goes away, and our stress hormones normalize and we don’t feel chronically anxious, or worried, or obsessive. Transcendental Meditation can potentially play an enormous role in inoculating kids against anxiety and the problems that grow out of chronic anxiety in childhood and adolescence.

© Copyright 2008 American Association of Physicians and Scientists Practicing the Transcendental Meditation Technique