Manifestations of anxiety in children alters as a child grows, and it is a known fact that most chronic mood and anxiety disorders in adults were preceded by anxiety disorders as a child. The link is strong. In what may seem as a strange correlation, children with functional constipation have been observed to have more anxiety related to toileting behavior than healthy children. Painful bowel movements can make a child fearful of pain, and these children dread sitting on the toilet. This is called defecation anxiety. Some of these children develop generalized anxiety at later stages the greater the defecation anxiety, the greater the generalized anxiety.
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