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Mood disorders include depression, dysthmia (a mild but long-lasting depression), schizo-affective disorder, bipolar disorder (often called manic-depression), and mania. If you think of someone's mood as falling on a continuum from very happy to very sad, mood disorders are identified when a person's mood is at either extreme of that continuum and stays there for a period of time. Everyone sometimes feels happy, sad, and somewhere in between but mood disorders are identified when a person's mood is very extreme and interferes with their overall functioning.
Anxiety disorders are identified when a person feels overly anxious, nervous, or scared. These anxious feelings can occur in response to a certain situation (going to school, for example), or they can come up "out of the blue." This category includes disorders such as specific phobias, separation anxiety, over-anxious disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder.
Our goal is to help your child’s feelings stay within a “normal” range: not too happy, too sad, or too worried. Everyone has these feelings sometimes, but if your child has extreme moods that interfere with his/her life, help may be needed.
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