Anxiety and Depression in Youth

It’s rare for me to go through a day in truancy court and not hear from a teen that part of the reason they have excessive absences from school is their anxiety or depression. In fact, the CDC says that 7.1% of children aged 3-17 have been diagnosed with anxiety and another 3.2% of that age group have been diagnosed with depression. Having another disorder is most common in children with depression: about 3 in 4 children aged 3-17 years with depression also have anxiety (73.8%) and almost 1 in 2 have behavior problems (47.2%).