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  • Q&A with Australian Health Practitioners

    My 15 year old daughter has anxiety, how do I get her to go to school?

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    Anxiety Mental Health
    My daughter (15) was recently diognosed with anxiety. After a month on a low does of medication, she is still having trouble going to school. She will reluctantly get dressed in the morning for school,and will go to school, but can't get out of the car when we get there. You can see the panic set in the closer we get to school. We can get her out of the car if we get help from a teacher, but its not pleasant. My husband and I are unsure if doing this will do more damage. What should we be doing to help her with this, at the moment we feel useless and very unsure of the best way to help her. She is going to a Psychologist, but you can never get in when you really need them the most. PLEASE HELP
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    Leanne Hall

    Clinical Psychologist, Psychologist

    Integrative Psychologist, Health Coach & Personal Trainer in private practice. I have expertise in assessing and treating a range of disorders and conditions; depression, anxiety, … View Profile

    It sounds like your daughter has some pretty negative thought processes which are causing her anxious behaviour. It is also likely, that many of these are outside of her awareness. Hopefully, the psychologist is teaching her skills to identify these thought processes so that she can then learn how to challenge them. As a parent, it can be extremely frustrating to know what to do - I would certainly urge you to talk to the psychologist about your feelings so that he/she can teach you how to help your daughter at home. 

    In the meantime, the best thing you can do is talk with her about what she is thinking. Encourage her to tell you what is going on in her head……you can ask things like: “what is the worst thing that can happen?”. Then you can help her rationalise her thought patterns. The key is to understand that her behaviour is actually perfectly rational - given what she is probably thinking. She needs to learn to change the THOUGHT not the feeling. If you can see the panic rising……talk her through it. You might say something like; “you have had this feeling before, and you know it will pass”. Tell her to focus on her breathing…..big breaths in, then slowly out. You can even model this behaviour and get her to copy you. Panic symptoms are caused by an imbalance of oxygen and carbon dioxide in the blood. Focusing on breathing will help bring the levels back to normal. 

    As a parent, you also need to walk that fine line of being reassuring….but not OVER reassuring. Establishing and sticking to a morning routine is important. Also, she needs you to stay calm and rational (as hard as this can be!). If you are getting anxious yourself, this will only reinforce her anxiety. It's ok for her to get upset as she needs to learn that her anxious thoughts (fears) are not predictive of what will happen. However, she needs strategies to self soothe at these times - hopefully her psychologist can help teach her these.

    I hope this helps!

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    Thanks heaps for that.  Another question I have is should we force her to go to school by getting help from the teachers, even though she is stressing and panicing, or will this do more damage to her. or is it better to just keep trying each day. We really don't know what to do in relation to school.  Any suggestions would be appreciated.

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    Leanne Hall

    Clinical Psychologist, Psychologist

    Integrative Psychologist, Health Coach & Personal Trainer in private practice. I have expertise in assessing and treating a range of disorders and conditions; depression, anxiety, … View Profile

    I would suggest having a meeting with the year co-rdinator and school counsellor. Ideally, your daughter's psychologist should be involved as well.

    Forcing her to go to school without a good support plan in place may do more damage (in that her anxiety could escalate). She may need a slower integration. Sometimes I advocate for my young patients to return slowly. If you have a supportive school they can help with this process, by allowing her to start attending only half a day etc… she can then build up to returning full-time. It's important that at the same time she is learning strategies to manage her anxiety.

    Hopefully your daughter can be involved in this process too. It would be good if she could identify a primary support person at school who can be her “go to person” should she be feeling anxious. This might be the school counsellor, a teacher or the year co-ordinator. 

    Best of luck.

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