What is Separation Anxiety Disorder?
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People with Separation Anxiety Disorder experience significant fear and worry when leaving their home or losing the company of a someone to whom they are emotionally bonded, also called an “attachment figure”. In children, this appears as crying, tantrums, and clinging behavior, where the child tries to remain in close physical proximity to the parents at all times, even within the home.
Children with separation anxiety require significant devotion of time and attention from the parents. Usually it’s more so from the mother, and this detracts from energy needed for the affected child’s siblings. This also causes occupational issues for the parent who needs to stay home from work when their child refuses to go to school.
These children also have delayed social development because of their reluctance to be without their parents. They often have difficulties around sleeping, including nightmares about separation and problems going to sleep by themselves. This often leads them to sleep in their parents’ bed (termed co-sleeping), which reinforces the anxious behavior. They will also avoid sleeping over at friends’ houses or going to overnight summer camp.
Adolescents with separation anxiety avoid leaving the home at socially appropriate ages and frequently do not attend college as a result. Affected adults also often live with their parents and have trouble getting jobs that require them to leave the home. If afflicted adults do manage to marry and have a family, the family becomes the focal attachment figures.
Without treatment, separation anxiety will follow a vacillating, yet chronic, course. Even with treatment, 30-40% of pediatric patients will have symptoms into adulthood. In fact, 75% of adults with anxiety disorders had Separation Anxiety Disorder as children.