School Phobia: What It Is, Symptoms, Causes And Treatment

When we talk about school phobia, we are referring to an anxiety disorder in which a excessive and irrational fear to attend a school. According to the DSM-V⁽¹⁾school phobia is within the category of specific phobias because this clinical condition is related to the school situation.

Characteristics of school phobia

If we take into account the diagnostic criteria of the DSM-V, the characteristics of school phobia are:

• Fear and/or anxiety regarding any aspect related to the school.
• The object and/or the specific situation are triggers for fear or anxiety.
• Avoidance of situations of anxiety or fear.
• Fear and/or anxiety disproportionate to the real danger represented by a situation or object.
• The duration is six months or more.
• Deterioration of the work, social and family area.

How to identify school phobia? When determining a clinical picture of social phobia, it is important to take into account the demonstrations presented by boys and girls with it they suffer. As a result of this circumstance, we will locate the main symptoms of school phobia:

• Prolonged crying.
• Screams.
• Headache.
• Stomach ache.
• Nausea.
• Vomiting.
• Difficulty getting to sleep.
• Daytime enuresis.
• Sadness.
• Irritability.
• Avoidance of school situations.
• Anxiety.

Although these symptoms can be found in any boy or girl who does not want to attend school, the truth is that this does not imply that we are dealing with school phobia. Given this, It is necessary that the diagnosis be made by a health professional since he will be in charge of evaluating the patient’s conditions and supervising clinical evolution.

One of the most important aspects to consider lies in the causes that give rise to this school anxiety disorder, since they can give us a guideline about the most effective ways to address the problem. In the following points we will develop the main causes of school phobia.

Environmental factors linked to school

At a general level, certain situations from the past can influence behaviors in the present. In the case of boys and girls with school phobia, it is possible that it occurred as a result of having experienced unpleasant moments both with teachers and with other classmates.

As examples, we can mention verbal and/or physical fights, mistreatment by other people, sexual abuse, difficulties in social relationships or school demands, among others.

Environmental factors linked to the home

School phobia can be caused by constant changes of addresses , fights between parents or due to exacerbated demands towards the minor, among other factors. These variables produce low self-esteem in the boy or girl, which leads to great withdrawal from school attendance. In these situations, we recommend the following activities to strengthen self-esteem in children.

How to help a child with school phobia? Despite the particularities that school phobia entails, there are a series of treatments that have shown good effectiveness in addressing this problem. Next, we will describe how to help a child with school phobia:

Psychological therapy

Currently, many therapies help the minor to develop else in the school environment since the emotions, thoughts and behaviors that arise in situations that trigger anxiety and/or anguish are worked on.

On the one hand, short-term therapies focus on solving problems in a limited period of sessions, in which various strategies are carried out that provide tools to the person. On the other hand, longer duration therapies focus their objective on locating the origin of people’s symptoms. This has the consequence that the boy or girl can act differently when faced with school phobia.

Guidance for parents

If you are wondering how to intervene in school phobia, one of the most effective methods is to offer workshops for parents of boys and girls who suffer from school phobia, in which tools are provided that enable communication improvement and allow the child’s educational experience to be improved.

This article is merely informative, at PsychologyFor we do not have the power to make a diagnosis or recommend a treatment. We invite you to go to a psychologist to treat your particular case.

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