Hello and welcome to the Zero to Finals podcast. My name is Tom, and in this episode, I'm going to be talking to you about generalised anxiety disorder in children.

And if you want to follow along with written notes on this topic, you can follow along at zero tofinals.com slash anxiety, or in the CAMS section of the Zero to Finals Pediatrics book.

So let's get straight into it.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder, or GAD, is a mental health condition that causes excessive

and disproportionate anxiety and worry that negatively impacts the person's everyday life.

Symptoms of anxiety may be present on a daily basis for months at a time.

Assessment

The GAD 7 Anxiety Questionaire can be helpful in establishing the severity of the diagnosis.

Assess for comorbid mental health problems such as depression or obsessive

compulsive disorder and assess for environmental triggers and contributors such as family

relationships, friendships, bullies, school pressures, alcohol and drug use. Management. Mild

anxiety can be managed with a watching and waiting approach with

advice about self-help strategies such as meditation, advice about diet, exercise and avoiding alcohol,

caffeine and drugs. Moderate to severe anxiety in children should be referred to the child and adolescent mental health

services who can initiate counselling, cognitive behavioural therapy and consider medical management.

Usually the first line medical management is an SSRI medication such as surgery.

So thanks for listening to this episode on generalised anxiety disorder in children.

A big thank you to Harry Watchman for perfectly editing this podcast.

You can find more information and more resources on the zero to finals website at zero to finals.com

and I hope you tune in for the next episode which will be on obsessive compulsive disorder.