Anxiety BC is doing all it can to help alleviate the growing number of children and youth who are suffering from anxiety in the province.
Registered Psychologist Dr Katherine Martinez says despite the influx of people who are suffering from anxiety, professionals in her field have done two things to better detect it.
“The first of which is that we have become better at assessing anxiety and seeing it in our kids and then the second is the numbers really do seem to be growing independent of us being better assessors.”
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When it comes to today’s youth, there are several factors at play as to why more of these cases are being reported.
“It should be no surprise to any of us due to the lives we lead today are full of stress from the environmental factors such as more people on the planet, school, vying for the same positions at universities and all sorts of these factors like telephone access and immediate demand for the exchange of information.”
According to Martinez, the rates of anxiety disorders in BC among children and youth were listed at about 20% – in the 20 years since that time, those numbers have gone up to 30%.
That means 30% of youth between the ages of four to 24 in the province will have an anxiety disorder at some point.
In the United States, common anxiety symptoms among college students include sweaty palms and an elevated heart rate.
Martinez says it’s not out of the realm of possibilities students in the same demographic across the province are encountering the same problem.
“There are some dangerous threat cues in our surrounding environment now that our system is being alerted to what we would call false alarms, so while it may be beneficial to have an elevated heart rate or sweaty palms when we come across a bear or a man with a gun, these same systems are now being activated when we step into a mass exam or go on a first date, which is not a threat to our survival.”
She adds North America seems to be at a crisis point with mental health and anxiety due to a lack providers who can assist.
“There was a study done in the past 5 years in the US that if we were able to double mental health providers overnight we would still not be able to meet the needs of mental health requirements in individuals.”
However, for those looking for a more timely solution, Anxiety BC has several resources available to help people of all age groups.
“One of the treatments that have been shown to be quite effective for anxiety is a treatment called cognitive and behavioural therapy and Anxiety BC has many of those tools available online we have a new program called MAP or My Anxiety Plans for both children and adults.”
From there, you can do some assessments to better understand what kind of anxiety you might be struggling followed by five steps towards treatment ranging from psycho-education to psychological management of anxiety.
Here is a video link.
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