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Task force recommends screening for depression and anxiety in young children

The U.S. Preventive Services Task Force issued a recommendation for pediatricians to screen kids for anxiety and depression as young as eight and 12, respectively.

CLEVELAND — A national group of experts called the U.S. Preventive Services Task Force has recommended that pediatricians screen children for anxiety and depression during their regular well checks. The recommendation, which came Tuesday, suggests kids as young as eight years old be screened for anxiety, and kids as young as 12 be screened for depression.

The guidance is a recommendation, not a requirement, and while pediatricians would screen for anxiety and depression, a diagnosis would come from a behavioral health specialist or psychologist.

Dr. Lisa Ramirez, associate director of pediatric psychology at MetroHealth, described the task force as a national collaboration of experts who look at research and identify best practices.

“What this U.S. Preventive Services Task Force is saying is that in all the research that they did around anxiety, they found that eight was really a critical point, where if you could start identifying children that are at risk for anxiety and challenges with anxiety, that there’s a lot of benefit to it,” Dr. Ramirez said, adding this was the same for depression and the age of 12.  

According to Dr. Ramirez, starting these conversations earlier can alleviate challenges down the road, and move away from dealing with issues after they arise, to preventing them from occurring in the first place.

“We’re starting to see that it’s actually really important that instead of waiting until something is a problem, that we move backward enough to where we start to recognize that we can intervene as early as possible, so that we’re preventing problems from happening, not waiting and responding to problems once they occur,” she said.

In identifying signs of anxiety and depression earlier on in a child’s life, Dr. Ramirez said that children can learn coping mechanisms earlier, and families and caregivers can better learn how to support their child or children.

“I hope that we can shift the conversation from something being wrong and like a mental health problem, to really promoting mental wellness,” she said. “And I think that’s hopefully where this task force was coming from - that we want to promote wellness by being able to catch things early and really have these conversations and help families understand that there are opportunities early on.”

Marian Armstrong has been a school counselor for over thirty years, and currently works at Parma Senior High. She said this new recommendation was a positive.

“You can never start young enough to start thinking about mental health, because trauma doesn’t start at eight,” Armstrong said. “We have a lot of kids that aren’t eating well, they don’t have a good environment, and all that stuff is going to affect not only their mental health but their physical health. We can never start early enough helping these kids.”

In her line of work, Armstrong sees firsthand the anxieties and difficulties young adults cope with, from navigating growing up, to the new challenges of social media.

“We’re seeing a lot more anxiety, a lot more confusion, a lot of that turns into a lack of motivation,” she said.

Armstrong and others in the Parma City School District have worked to promote mental wellness, through programs like the Hope Squad, a group of students who provide support to peers and find help, to the Mental Health and Safety Summit, which this year included 20 districts.

Olivia Ekechi, a junior, is a member of the Hope Squad, and uses those skills to regularly check in on her family and friends.

“We really started talking about it once I got to high school, it’s when I started to become very aware, and to start taking it seriously,” she said of mental health.

Dr. Ramirez, Armstrong, and Ekechi all said they felt that being aware of mental health at a younger age would make an impact.

“Let’s normalize asking about how kids are doing and how they’re feeling,” said Dr. Ramirez.

While children and young adults may all show symptoms of anxiety or depression in different ways, Dr. Ramirez and Armstrong mentioned warnings signs like becoming withdrawn or isolated, changes in appetite or sleep, absenteeism, and aggressiveness or irritability.

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