Children's Health and Mental Illness: Anxiety Disorders in Children and Adolescents Fact Sheet

Anxiety can be a normal reaction to stress. It can
help us deal with a tense situation, study
harder for an exam, or keep focused on an important
speech. In general, it can help us cope. But when
anxiety becomes an excessive, irrational dread
of everyday situations, it has become a disabling
condition. Examples of anxiety disorders are obsessive
compulsive disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder,
social phobia, specific phobia, and generalized anxiety
disorder. Symptoms of many of these disorders begin
in childhood or adolescence.