American scientists from the University of Houston in Texas found that raising children with threats and fear increases the likelihood of them developing anxiety disorders in adulthood. The study was published in the scientific journal magazine Journal of Clinical Psychology (JCP).
Anxiety disorders are a group of mental health conditions characterized by excessive and persistent feelings of fear and worry that can affect a person’s daily life. This category includes generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and specific phobias. Symptoms typically include anxiety, muscle tension, rapid heart rate, increased sweating, and extreme fear, and often occur for no apparent reason.
855 undergraduate students aged between 18 and 24 participated in the research. Participants completed an online survey assessing their childhood exposure to threatening behavior from their parents and also answered questions to measure levels of both helplessness and self-efficacy (the belief that one can perform successful behavior in a difficult situation).
Researchers found that threatening behavior toward both mother and father was associated with lower self-efficacy and higher feelings of helplessness.
The authors developed and tested a statistical model suggesting that parents’ threatening behavior during childhood leads to increased perceptions of helplessness and decreased self-efficacy, which in turn leads to increased severity of anxiety symptoms. The analysis showed that these factors were associated with only threatening behavior towards the mother, not the father.
“The results showed that children’s greater exposure to maternal threatening behavior was indirectly associated with the severity of anxiety symptoms through greater perceptions of helplessness and reduced self-efficacy,” the scientists said.
Psychologists before I learnedthat one of the main causes of children’s complexes remains poor support from parents.