Anxiety in children
University of Bucharest, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, Bucharest, Romania
Email: alinachiracu@yahoo.com
Anxiety is an activation state of the whole body, which drives a set of emotions and tendencies of action, manifested in the form of concerns, worries, alertness and caution and is also an alarm signal calling attention to the possibility of something happening against personal wishes. It provides the ability to act constructively and call the rules of survival. Anxiety is a natural response and an adaptive form of warning, which the human being is endowed with. This disorder can become pathological when it manifests excessively and uncontrollable, when it appears in the absence of external stimuli and when it is expressed through a variety of physical, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral symptoms.
Anxiety disorders are the most common diagnostics made in child psychological pathology. The prevalence rate of anxiety in children aged 9 to 13 years was 5.7% and in children aged 9 to 17 years, 17% (Castellanos, & Hunter, 1999).