Anxiety in infancy: Implication for the teenage years

We live in an anxious world. The World Health Organisation (2024) estimates that 4% of the world population were suffering from a diagnosable anxiety disorder in 2019. This is almost certainly the tip of the iceberg: for example, UK surveys for the mental health foundation found just under 20% of people reported high levels of anxiety (a broader criterion than diagnosed disorder) in that year. And this was before the pandemic, or the alarmingly swift onset of the consequences of climate change, the outbreak of wars in Europe and the Middle East, the economic squeeze on many resulting from all this. High anxiety, and the disorders associated with anxiety, are the biggest mental health problems of our era. And this affects all age groups, from the youngest to the oldest.

Anxiety and anxiety disorders are generally the first mental health problem to emerge in the young (Sullivan and Opendak, 2021). Whereas most mental health problems begin in late childhood or adolescence, anxiety issues tend to begin earlier than this, in infancy or early childhood (Solmi et al, 2022). Despite increasing recognition of that, anxiety in the very young is under-researched, under-recognised and under-treated (Creswell et al, 2020). This matters: anxiety is not only miserable in itself, but has a negative impact on development, affecting social and cognitive functioning. And anxiety in infancy and early childhood can be a powerful predictor of a range of psychiatric disorders in adolescence (Bittner et al, 2007). If we took anxiety in infants and young children more seriously, offered better interventions at these ages, could we reduce or mitigate the high burden of anxiety in adolescence? Expert opinion increasingly suggests that very early interventions can mitigate later mental health problems (Creswell et al, 2020; Luby et al, 2020).