Care and Support Updates

Young people who struggle with social anxiety experience intense discomfort in social settings. To ease their anxiety, they often begin avoiding social situations, which unfortunately makes their anxiety worse. While individual treatment teaches children and adolescents strategies for how to tolerate social situations without avoiding them, there is growing evidence that practicing and refining these skills is more effective when done in group formats.

Sometimes anxiety is easy to identify — like when a child is feeling nervous before a test at school. Other times anxiety in the classroom can look like something else entirely — an upset stomach, disruptive or angry behavior, ADHD, or even a learning disorder. There are many different kinds of anxiety, which is one of the reasons it can be hard to detect in the classroom. What they all have in common is that they tend to make school hard for anxious kids.

Tourette’s, Tic, Trichotillomania, and related disorders can significantly impact the lives of children and adolescents. These conditions are characterized by persistent unwanted behaviors and sensations that can cause distress and interfere with daily functioning. At the Child Mind Institute, our treatment is based on evidence-based therapies and gold-standard approaches, empowering individuals to regain control over these conditions and enhance their overall quality of life.h.

Kathryn L. Keough, PhD is a psychologist in the Anxiety Disorders Center at the Child Mind Institute. Dr. Keough has a specialized interest in the evaluation and treatment of children and families managing anxiety, trauma, and obsessive-compulsive disorders. She has experience treating selective mutism, social anxiety, separation anxiety, generalized anxiety, phobias, post-traumatic stress disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder in children and adults.