The concept “school phobia” is used to refer to situations of refusal to attend school by children and adolescents. In many cases, anxiety and fear at the prospect of going to class is not present or does not have the intensity required for the diagnosis of specific phobia; In any case, the key aspect is the avoidance of school.
In this article we will describe What is school phobia and what are its symptoms and causes?. To do this, we will compare it with other similar problems that may overlap with this disorder, such as separation anxiety and specific phobias. However, it must be taken into account that there are no official diagnostic criteria for school phobia.
School phobia can be defined as an intense and persistent fear of going to school, although there is a certain lack of agreement regarding this perspective: while some authors conceive this disorder as a true phobia, Others associate it more with separation anxiety. This last point of view is the one defended by the DSM-IV.
It is important to note that the most used diagnostic categories do not include specifications for school phobia. Cases in which there is a true fear of school can be classified as specific phobias, a label shared by disorders such as claustrophobia, fear of insects, blood or heights.
Girls and boys with school phobia experience marked feelings of anxiety when they are at school, as well as at the prospect of going to school. Many of the children affected report that the discomfort is due to their fear of academic failure, although the causes may be diverse.
From a practical point of view The fundamental aspect of school phobia is the refusal to go to school, which sometimes results in absences that can last weeks or months. This avoidance, a very characteristic aspect of phobias, leads to academic delays for children and logistical difficulties for parents.
Unlike what happens in cases of truants, parents are aware that their daughter or son does not go to class. They also express their desire for the situation to be resolved; This differentiates school phobia from school dropout, associated with parental neglect. Anxiety and fear are also specific to school phobia.
Associated symptoms
Specific phobias are fundamentally characterized by the appearance of feelings of intense anxiety in the presence or anticipation of what is feared (the phobic stimulus), as well as by the avoidance behaviors that derive from this fear.
Fear of school manifests itself in reactions such as crying, screaming and complaints, as well as in negativistic behaviors of refusal to obey parents. Irritability and angry outbursts are also common forms of fear expression in young children, who are less aware of their own emotions than most adults.
Mood tends to be low, with depressive-type symptoms such as apathy and sadness. Like anxiety, depressed mood distinguishes this phobia from other causes of school absenteeism. There also tends to be a significant dependency on one or both parents, and these are often people predisposed to anxiety.
It is common for somatic reactions to occur as a result of anxiety; Among these stand out headache and gastrointestinal symptoms, such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea and stomach pain. Physical and cognitive discomfort can also lead to enuresis and problems eating or falling and staying asleep.
The appearance of school phobia is associated with precipitating factors of a psychosocial nature. Some of them are directly related to academic life, such as changes of address and school, academic failure repeating a grade, lack of social skills, social phobia and school abuse, commonly known as bullying.
However, this fear also frequently appears in girls and boys who have recently lost a loved one, who have been affected by the separation of their parents or who have suffered an illness that has caused them to be absent from school for a time.
From the perspective of operant conditioning we can affirm that parental behavior has great relevance in the development of school phobia: Allowing the child to stay at home acts as a reinforcer of his fear of going to school. In this sense, paternal overprotection and anxiety are considered very important variables.
A factor that also plays an important role in school phobia is the fact that children tend to prefer staying at home rather than going to school. In many cases this disorder can be associated with periods in which the level of academic demand increases, such as during exam times or oral presentations of work.
