Worried about the Worriers? Teachers’ knowledge, recognition and attributions about children with anxiety difficulties

It has been proposed that anxiety is on a continuum; at one end, anxiety as a normal response to fear and threat situations, at the other excessive anxiety in the form of disorders, where children continue to fear things that would not be expected for their developmental level and which impact on life experiences.

The prevalence of anxiety disorders is estimated to be somewhere between 2-15% dependent on diagnostic criteria with more girls than boys being diagnosed.

Anxiety disorders can limit academic achievement, inhibit social participation and psychological functioning, and has serious long term implications. However, these children are underreferred to appropriate services.

Teachers have been recognised as being the first people outside the family to identify children's emotional problems yet there is limited recognition of anxiety disorders by parents, health professionals and teachers.

Previous research suggests that teachers are accurate reporters of children's behavioural difficulties (e.g. aggression, conduct disorder), but tend to be less accurate in identifying children with internalising mental health difficulties, such as depression or anxiety.

A systematic literature review sought to investigate teacher's recognition of children and young people experiencing internalising disorders along with the factors that may influence recognition rates. Mixed results for recognition/identification were found.

The most influential factors on recognition were severity of difficulty and the amount of time spent/familiarity the teacher had with the child.

Using vignettes of children experiencing  differing levels of anxiety, the empirical paper investigated the impact of teacher factors (gender, length of service, knowledge of anxiety difficulties), child factors (symptom severity, gender) and teacher's attributions on their recognition and help-seeking behaviour for children experiencing anxiety difficulties.

Findings suggest that teacher's level of concern and their likelihood to seek help increased as the level of severity of difficulty increased, but this was not influenced by knowledge of anxiety.