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Areas › Worry and anxiety › The cost of avoiding
It feels rare because nobody mentions it at the school gate. In a school of a thousand that is a dozen or more children needing active support at any one time, which is reason to ask for a proper system rather than a personal favour. It turns up in boys and girls in roughly equal numbers, and rather more in big schools and big cities.
They were so shaken that even their messenger and the believers with him cried, 'When will God's help arrive?' Truly, God's help is near (Quran 2:214). Being badly shaken has never put anyone outside the ordinary run of people.
البقرة
أَمۡ حَسِبۡتُمۡ أَن تَدۡخُلُواْ ٱلۡجَنَّةَ وَلَمَّا يَأۡتِكُم مَّثَلُ ٱلَّذِينَ خَلَوۡاْ مِن قَبۡلِكُمۖ مَّسَّتۡهُمُ ٱلۡبَأۡسَآءُ وَٱلضَّرَّآءُ وَزُلۡزِلُواْ حَتَّىٰ يَقُولَ ٱلرَّسُولُ وَٱلَّذِينَ ءَامَنُواْ مَعَهُۥ مَتَىٰ نَصۡرُ ٱللَّهِۗ أَلَآ إِنَّ نَصۡرَ ٱللَّهِ قَرِيبࣱ
Do you suppose that you will enter the Garden without first having suffered like those before you? They were afflicted by misfortune and hardship, and they were so shaken that even [their] messenger and the believers with him cried, ‘When will God’s help arrive?’ Truly, God’s help is near
Qur’an 2:214read it in the library
Translation: M.A.S. Abdel Haleem, The Qur'an, Oxford University Press, 2004.
In a community clinic study of 197 anxious young people, dropping out of treatment was frequent and to some degree predictable from the start. It describes one clinic and does not explain why people left. It is still worth knowing that leaving early is the usual way this kind of help fails, so it is worth planning at the outset for how you will stay in it.
Gonzalez A, Weersing VR, Warnick EM, Scahill LD, Woolston JL. (2011). Predictors of treatment attrition among an outpatient clinic sample of youths with clinically significant anxiety.. Administration and policy in mental health doi
Strength of evidence: one line of research. A single study, or a theoretical account.
Shame makes a common problem feel unique, and a problem that feels unique is much harder to ask for help with.
When someone with attention difficulties loses the structure around them, the difficulty shows in full. Nothing has got worse in them; the scaffolding that carried part of it has gone.
The first day back is worse than the weeks before it, not better. Plan for that spike rather than letting it take you by surprise.
Staff who think a child is playing them will respond in ways that make school worse. A short explanation of how avoidance actually works changes what happens in the corridor.