'It's Nothing Serious I Suppose' Family Help-Seeking for Adolescent Social Anxiety

This article investigates how families seek professional supports for adolescent social anxiety. Many adolescents meet diagnostic criteria for social anxiety disorder but do not access professional mental health supports. Access to timely interventions is important because social anxiety has a range of developmental implications and typically persists into adulthood when untreated. Twelve adolescents (aged 14 to 18) who had attended mental health services for support with social anxiety and 13 mothers of such adolescents participated in semi-structured interviews which were analysed thematically. Findings indicated that mothers play an important role in noticing difficulties and initiating help-seeking for their children, although adolescents and their mothers can initially view anxiety as 'just shyness' and often seek help for a range of difficulties, including unhappiness, rather than anxiety specifically. Furthermore, many adolescents described experiencing help-seeking as embarrassing or shameful. Implications for facilitating families to access professional supports for adolescents are discussed.