Pediatric anxiety treatment for children and teens
Mayo Clinic's Pediatric Anxiety Disorders Clinic helps children and teenagers overcome anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) through proven, compassionate care.
If your child is struggling with anxiety, constant worry, fears or obsessive thoughts, effective help is available. The Pediatric Anxiety Disorders Clinic provides specialized, evidence-based treatment to help children and teens build confidence, reduce anxiety and return to everyday life.
How Mayo Clinic can help your child
Mayo Clinic's Pediatric Anxiety Disorders Clinic provides efficient, research-backed treatment. The approach, called exposure-based behavioral therapy, helps children face fears gradually in a safe, structured way. The goal is for them to feel more confident and less anxious over time. Rather than avoiding anxiety, children learn how to face it and manage it.
A couple of aspects of our care set our clinic apart:
- Parents are actively involved throughout treatment so they can support their child's progress, not only during sessions, but also at home and in daily life.
- We offer treatment in two forms to meet your needs. For families traveling to Rochester, Minnesota, we offer an intensive program of daily therapy sessions over five days. This helps children make meaningful progress in a shorter period of time. If you live near Rochester, we also offer a once-a-week program over 2 to 3 months.
Treatment approach
Comprehensive evaluation
Treatment begins with a detailed evaluation to understand your child's symptoms, history and current level of functioning. This process helps determine whether the program is the best fit for your child's needs and allows the care team to develop an individualized treatment plan.
Parent-Coached Exposure Therapy
Our treatment approach has been demonstrated to help children make faster progress than traditional treatment approaches. The process begins with a full evaluation to make sure our program fits your family's needs. During both assessment and treatment, we work with parents and youths together. We help you build the skills and confidence to address anxiety and OCD as a team.
At Mayo Clinic, we use a state-of-the-art, proven form of exposure therapy that we developed, called Parent-Coached Exposure Therapy. In each session, our trained clinicians work with youths and parents through a series of confidence-building exercises. These exercises involve facing fears or breaking OCD compulsions in a safe, supported way. For example, children with social anxiety might practice starting conversations with other group members. Visit our research page to learn about the data supporting our treatment program.
The goal of this approach is to help youth feel calmer and less anxious. They learn from experience that their fears are unlikely to happen. This method is the most effective treatment for problematic anxiety and OCD.
As parents take part in these sessions, they also gain the skills and confidence to support their child. This continued support is called parent coaching.
Group and individual care
Whenever possible, families join group sessions with about 5 to 7 other children and their parents or guardians. These groups help you see that you are not alone and that other families are coping with similar conditions. The sessions also offer a chance to practice real-life exposures and foster peer support and shared learning.
Exposure exercises are tailored to your child's needs. For example, an exercise might include:
- Giving a presentation to the group.
- Doing a homework assignment without too much checking to make sure it is perfect.
- Sitting in a dark room alone.
- Touching public door handles.
- Walking in crowds.
- Others activities based on your child's needs.
We offer individual sessions when clinically appropriate and adjust the care plan based on each family's needs.
Medication support
Your child may meet with a psychiatrist if needed to determine whether medicine may be helpful as part of a comprehensive treatment plan. Decisions about medicine are made collaboratively with families and are tailored to each child's specific symptoms and goals.
5-day intensive treatment program
If you need to travel to Rochester, Minnesota, we offer a five-day intensive treatment program. This program delivers Parent-Coached Exposure Therapy over a single week while keeping the same treatment goals and evidence-based structure used in weekly care.
During the program, you and your family take part in multiple daily sessions that focus on exposure practice and parent coaching. Your child will have repeated opportunities to face specific fears in a supportive setting. This allows for rapid progress and confidence building.
Our goal is that by the end of the week, your child experiences a meaningful reduction in anxiety symptoms and you feel confident you can continue these exposure exercises at home, based on the hands-on practice you performed coaching your child throughout the week.
At the end of the program, you will leave with a structured plan to continue building on your progress at home. You will also receive guidance from the care team about follow-up care and ongoing support.
Weekly treatment program
If you live in the Rochester, Minnesota, area, you can participate in a weekly treatment program that provides consistent, structured care over time.
Following the initial evaluation, we provide an orientation session to develop an individualized treatment plan. The plan will include exposure exercises tailored to address your child's anxiety or OCD. You and your child then take part in once-weekly group sessions focused on practicing exposure exercises and building confidence.
Most families attend six to eight sessions, although the length of treatment varies depending on individual progress and goals. The program is designed to be flexible enough to meet the needs of busy families.
Our team
At the Pediatric Anxiety Disorders Clinic, you and your child will be cared for by a multidisciplinary team of experts. Our program director specializes in pediatric anxiety and OCD, while the medical director is an expert in child and adolescent psychiatry.
Depending on your needs, you may work with staff psychologists, therapists or research coordinators.
Our team continually researches pediatric anxiety conditions and OCD, so you and your child will receive the latest treatments proven to be effective.
Clinical trials
Children and families receiving care through the Pediatric Anxiety Disorders Clinic may have opportunities to take part in clinical trials. These studies improve treatment approaches, better understand the causes of anxiety disorders, and develop new tools for diagnosis and care.
Additional resource
Anxiety Coach: A Parent's Guide to Treating Childhood Anxiety and OCD
"Anxiety Coach" is a new program in book form for parents of children and teens with anxiety disorders or OCD. This book is the first of its kind to give parents the tools to use exposure therapy with their children at home. It comes from Mayo Clinic's gold standard exposure therapy program.
This helpful book guides parents on how to practice exposure therapy at home so their children lead happy, healthy, anxiety-free lives.
Take the next step
If your child is struggling with anxiety or OCD, early treatment can make a lasting difference. Connecting with a specialized care team can help your child build confidence and return to daily activities with greater ease.
Request an appointment by calling us at 507-266-5100.
Phones are answered from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. Central time, Monday through Friday.