Early Life Stress and Pediatric Anxiety Program (ELSPAP)
Pediatric anxiety disorders are the most common psychiatric disorders diagnosed in children. If left untreated, they can cause severe deficits in brain function, which can lead to academic decline, chronic illness, and social impairment. Even with this prevalence and severity, children suffering from anxiety disorders are often not identified or misdiagnosed. Partially, this results from the usual comorbidity (multiple diagnoses) that can co-occur with anxiety disorders. In addition to the emotional disorders that result from anxiety, dysfunctional anxiety can also imitate cardiological, neurological, and gastrointestinal disorders, ultimately bringing about serious physiological problems.
For more than twenty years, the Pediatric Anxiety Clinic at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital has effectively treated children for anxiety-related disorders. Children come to the clinic with a variety of symptoms, ranging from restlessness and sleep difficulties to irritability and excessive worry. The six attending psychiatrists and psychologists in the clinic, all of whom are experts in the specialized field of pediatric anxiety, treat patients for disorders such as separation anxiety, panic disorder, agoraphobia, social and specific phobias, generalized anxiety disorders, obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD), and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and their comorbidities. Postdoctoral fellows in psychology and medicine actively participate in the treatment of patients.
