Research explores relaxed approach to anxious children

Do anxious parents pass on their fears to their children? How can parents best help anxious children to overcome life-limiting fears and over-anxious behaviour?

These are some of the questions that a team of psychologists at the University of Sussex will be exploring with the help of volunteer families.

Anxiety is the most common psychological disorder of childhood. Conservative estimates suggest that around one in 30 children experience severe problems with it. Anxiety may be on the rise because of the stresses and strains of modern childhood.

Anxiety runs in families and can affect even very young children, so psychologists often treat it in a family setting, rather than just trying to treat the child themselves.

Now clinical psychologist Dr Sam Cartwright-Hatton, who has spent many years working with families experiencing anxiety problems, has been awarded half a million pounds by the National Institute of Health Research to find new ways for families to deal with anxiety problems.

Children learn anxious behaviour from an anxious parent. But genetics plays a part as well, meaning that sometimes children can exhibit anxious behaviour even though their parents are naturally relaxed and calm.

“It may be that being anxious has some evolutionary benefit in helping us to avoid danger, but if an anxious temperament is reinforced by anxious parenting, it can have a negative effect,” says Dr Cartwright-Hatton. “So we want to find out what parents can do to raise a confident child, particularly if the parent suffers with anxiety.”

To begin with, the research team is looking to recruit 64 ordinary families and 64 families where a parent is very anxious, with children aged between 5 and 9 years to take part in some simple laboratory-based tests involving computer games and other tasks.

Dr Cartwright-Hatton says: “These tests would involve a series of computer exercises and an opportunity to handle some worms or other ugly bugs – but only if you want to! What we learn from watching families and children working together on these exercises will allow us to create some techniques for use in clinics to help raise confidence in both parents and their children.”

The lab testing will involve taking an optional cheek swab from the children to look at their genes and a series of tasks for the parents and children to complete. The researchers will observe how the parents and children manage these tasks.

The results of the five-year study will support new family workshops in Sussex Partnership NHS Foundation Trust hospitals and clinics, with a pilot scheme kicking off in 2012.