The first thing is that if parents themselves experience clinically significant

anxiety, their children are four to six times more likely themselves to experience

difficult anxiety. And that's really because anxiety has multiple sources and

components and one of them is biological and so that when there is anxiety in

the family it is not surprising to see it in kids. I think what you're

describing and using the word set click is really something that we're all

familiar with which is that anxiety and fear can be contagious in a way, right?

So when a person is anxious, the people around them will see their feeling of

worry, their feeling of fear and that can induce a similar feeling in them.

Hello everyone, welcome back to the show. I continue to get to talk to the most

amazing guests on this podcast to have conversations about parenthood,

child health, development, mental health, and so much more. So thank you for tuning in

and for being here today. Today's guest is Dr. Helen Egger who is a child psychiatrist,

former chair of the Department of Child Psychiatry at NYU Langone and co-founder and chief medical

officer of Little Otter, a company that provides online mental health care to children and

families. And she's joining me today to talk about how parental anxiety can actually impact

childhood anxiety. Thank you so much for joining us today Dr. Helen. Thank you so much for having

me. I'm really delighted to be here. I'm very excited about this topic obviously with your

experience as well in child psychiatry and helping children and families with mental health.

But tell us more about yourself and why this topic is important to you.

Well, thank you. Yes, so I have been a child psychiatrist for over 30 years and

one of the areas that I have done research in is anxiety disorders in children, particularly

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