Published: August 21, 2008 09:24 pm         

Fear of going to school is common affliction for some pupils

Point Blank column

Most high school students stroll confidently through the halls, which buzz with a jangly adolescent energy.

Talking with friends en route to physics class, student encounters look almost effortless.

But for some, starting the school year is something like planting a flag atop Mount Everest.

Don’t look now, but psychiatrists have come up with a new tag for academic anxiety — it’s called school refusal behavior.

Now, before you reach for the phone, let me explain.

For those students who suffer from this disorder — about 5 percent of the student population, according to the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry — the mere thought of entering a classroom is so distressing they will do almost anything to escape.

This latest academic warning sign currently is being thrashed out by professionals as the United States searches for answers to its perplexing high school dropout rate — which hovers at about 30 percent.

Attendance, as it turns out, is just starting to be recognized as a complex issue, sometimes requiring therapeutic, rather than disciplinary action, experts say.

Skeptics, meanwhile, may dismiss such conduct as a scam allowing children to languish on the couch playing video games and requiring no more specialized treatment than a swift kick in the pants.

But clinicians maintain this is different from regular truancy. These youngsters aren’t cutting class to do something fun; they suffer from debilitating anxiety.

It looks manipulative — but it’s not.

That’s what officials say with a straight face.

And while these kids promise to go to school tomorrow, they beg to stay home today.

In fact, they’ll plead anything to be home-schooled.

But that’s not all. There’s even a medical facility in New Jersey that offers a program specifically designed to address the disorder of school refusal behavior.

Dr. Tahseen Mohammed, a psychiatrist at Northwest Community Hospital in Arlington Heights, N.J., observed recently that his office is busier than usual, as student symptoms appear to be getting worse by the day.

This is the way the school refusal disorder is described to parents and laymen:

“… the first few weeks of the academic year typically are quiet, but by October all of the slots are full … with a waiting list.

The majority of clients are referred by nearby high schools, but some have come from as far as Illinois. It is not unusual for students in the program to pile up 50 absences a year; one teen had not set foot in a classroom for two years.”

A clinical coordinator also goes on to explain: “Kids are miserable, and parents are frustrated.

No matter what parents say or do, it doesn’t make any difference … and they don’t know where to turn.”

And yet, this is nothing new to the academic world.

“School phobia” started appearing in medical literature during the 1960s. By 1990, school refusal behavior became the preferred term.

Typically, it starts with physical complaints such as headaches, sore throats or stomach cramps. Children may seem fine on the weekend, but by Sunday night the ailments reappear, and the battles — the pleading, bribery and threats — start all over.

Left unchecked, experts warn, such anxiety can trigger other problems, including school dropout, social isolation and delinquency.

Medical officials, meanwhile, urge aggressive treatment for the disorder.

The condition may start in early childhood with excessive clinginess sparked by fears of abandonment or that “something bad” will happen while they are away.

The condition seems to peak during early adolescence, when youngsters leave the nurturing elementary school environment, a time when their hormones go haywire and self-consciousness is at its crest.

But like all emotional illnesses, anxiety disorders are a daily battle, something to be managed, not cured.

Thus far, the data provided by the New Jersey clinic offers a reminder that recovery is fragile: Of the 45 students discharged from the program, half had six absences or less after 90 days while half had more — typically, when families start getting lax about bedtime and waking routines that help keep children on track.

So, for now, it’s a cliché, but these suffering students are just taking it one day at a time, strolling down the halls, talking to friends, buzzing with jangling adolescent energy … climbing the mountain, planting their uneasy flag at the top.

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Top o’ the morning!

— Blankenship is a columnist for The Register-Herald. E-mail: jabbb@suddenlink.net