N.H. parent writes new book on childhood anxiety
Amanda Bacon-Davis struggled for years, watching her daughter Ella Rain suffer with anxiety without knowing how to deal with it.
Bacon-Davis said her daughter started experiencing anxiety when she was 2 years old. By the time her daughter turned 8, she had expressed suicidal thoughts, and Bacon-Davis said that made her change her approach to parenting.
“As she grew, her anxiety grew right along with her, and it looked very similar to behavioral issues,” Bacon-Davis said. But she wasn’t able to help her daughter until she realized that she wasn’t just misbehaving.
From that experience, Bacon-Davis decided to write a book for children about anxiety, called “This Thing Has A Name.”
”I wrote this book to help my daughter understand that her anxiety was just as real as having a broken bone,” she said. The book has received praise from some in the medical community.
“The content … is spot on for how a child can experience the powerful emotions associated with anxiety,” said Dennis Walker, the vice president of clinical operations, emergency services, and intake at Portsmouth-based Seacoast Mental Health Center, Inc. He said the book shows how children experience anxiety and also provides some evidence-based ways to beat it.
Mental health disorders affect 1 in 6 kids between the ages of 6 to 17 and 50 percent of all lifetime mental illness begins by age 14, according to the National Alliance on Mental Health.
“She was actually screaming at us to listen, through her behaviors,” BaconDavis said. “That was when we were truly able to help her.”