ON THE MINDS OF MOMS IN-DEPTH
The 'anxious generation' Why young people are lonelier and more stressed than the rest of us
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Story by | Tracy Briggs
hen you first spot Concordia College senior Mollie Francis sitting at a table at the school’s
Knutson Campus Center, you immediately get the sense she’s someone others admire. She’s a good student, hoping one day to be a physician assistant, and she was active in track and soccer in high school. She looks like any other smiling student athlete in the yearbook. And in many ways, she is. Francis is one of a growing number of young people in the United States battling anxiety. Anxiety is defined by the American Psychological Association as “an emotion characterized by feelings of tension, worried thoughts and physical changes, such as sweating, trembling, dizziness or a rapid heartbeat.” People with anxiety disorders usually have recurring intrusive thoughts or concerns and may avoid certain situations out of worry about what could happen. “When I was a freshman and I’d be studying, I’d have these little panic attacks, like I don’t know this material and I’m not gonna be able to learn in X amount of time,” Francis says. She was also starting to lose weight.
“I couldn’t eat, nothing looked appetizing. I actually went to the doctor and they ended up doing a lot of extensive testing in terms of different food intolerances because that’s what we thought the issue was. Then I went to a gastroenterologist and they did an endoscopy. After all of that, we figured out it was anxiety,” she says. Her story is all too common. Most children who end up with an anxiety diagnosis first complain about their stomach hurting. It’s a symptom they can easily explain. What is harder to explain is exactly what is causing anxiety in teens and children and how we, as parents, can help them cope. Find On the Minds of Mom first in-depth series: “The anxiety epidemic”, a seven-part series publishing Jan. 7 through 14 on InForum.com. Tracy Briggs investigates possible reasons for the increase of anxiety cases and discusses treatment options with both sufferers and health practitioners. The anxious generation In 2018, Pew Research polled 920 Americans between the ages of 13 and 17 to learn about the concerns faced by Generation Z, defined as those born JANUARY • FEBRUARY 2020 | ON THE MINDS OF MOMS
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