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(108,903 posts) Fri Nov 2, 2012, 07:23 AM Nov 2012

Trickle-Down Anxiety: Study Examines Parental Behaviors That Create Anxious Children

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/11/121101171946.htm

ScienceDaily (Nov. 1, 2012) — Parents with social anxiety disorder are more likely than parents with other forms of anxiety to engage in behaviors that put their children at high risk for developing angst of their own, according to a small study of parent-child pairs conducted at Johns Hopkins Children's Center.

Authors of the federally funded study say past research has linked parental anxiety to anxiety in children, but it remained unclear whether people with certain anxiety disorders engaged more often in anxiety-provoking behaviors. Based on the new study findings, they do. A report on the team's findings appears online ahead of print in the journal Child Psychiatry and Human Development.

Specifically, the Johns Hopkins researchers identified a subset of behaviors in parents with social anxiety disorder -- the most prevalent type of anxiety -- and in doing so clarified some of the confusion that has shrouded the trickle-down anxiety often seen in parent-child pairs.

These behaviors included a lack of or insufficient warmth and affection and high levels of criticism and doubt leveled at the child. Such behaviors, the researchers say, are well known to increase anxiety in children and -- if engaged in chronically -- can make it more likely for children to develop a full-blown anxiety disorder of their own, the investigators say.