Dr. Michelle McKenner
Michelle is a Chartered Clinical Psychologist with extensive experience working with adults, children, and families. She supports with a wide range of challenges, including depress...
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Who are you?
Hi, I'm Dr. Michele McKenner, and I'm a clinical psychologist. You can come and ask me questions about anxiety in children and find out how best to support your child.
What is anxiety?
So anxiety is a feeling of worry or fear or unease. And we often experience it as different physical sensations in our bodies accompanied by maybe some worrying thoughts. And of course anxiety is a very normal response to a stressful situation, but it's when it becomes very constant and it's really interfering with everyday life that you might start to think it's problematic and it's in that kind of situation that you might want to go and see your GP to get some advice and to be assessed.
What are some different types of anxiety disorders?
There are quite a few different types of anxiety disorder with different symptoms and characteristics. Generalised anxiety disorder or GAD is quite a common one. You also have obsessive compulsive disorder or OCD, and then you can have separation anxiety, social anxiety, health anxiety. And then there's post-traumatic stress disorder or PTSD is also a type of anxiety disorder, as are things like panic or phobias. So there's quite a range of different anxiety disorders.