From Harm to Help: Transforming Anxiety Management in Schools

Anxiety is the most common mental health concern among school-aged children and adolescents, yet a frequent response in schools, accommodating students by allowing them to avoid anxiety-provoking tasks, can entrench the very difficulties it aims to relieve. This paper organizes both the problem and its solution around two complementary learning processes: anxiety is maintained through negative reinforcement of avoidance, and it is reduced through inhibitory learning generated by expectancy-violating approach experiences. Using this framework, the paper distinguishes accommodations that provide legitimate access from those that function as adult-supported avoidance, examines how the latter impair academic, social, and personal functioning, and analyzes the systemic pressures that keep them in place. It then sets out the role of school psychologists in leading change by building educator capacity, providing ongoing consultation, strengthening classroom and home–school supports, and coaching educators to promote approach over avoidance, and locates whole-school social-emotional learning within this approach. Because student anxiety is sustained by adult-supported avoidance and reduced by adult-supported approach, durable change begins with the systems and adults who shape the learning environment.