HealthQ’s Cara Anthony and Blake Farmer share know-how for parents navigating the decision to seek out mental healthcare for a child.
Divorce rocked the lives of Marcela Cabay and her daughter, who was a preschooler at the time. But counseling didn’t come until years later, when Cabay noticed her daughter was tensing up every time a storm rolled through or whenever they were preparing to be apart.
“She was experiencing just a lot of anxiety, really starting to think worst-case scenarios all the time, just really struggling in her daily life,” said Cabay, who is a life insurance broker outside Austin, Texas.
At first, Cabay attempted to help her daughter herself. She suggested coping strategies for the 8-year-old to regulate her emotions. She hoped the behavior would pass. But, over time, the anxiety got worse.
“That’s when I finally was like, ‘I think it would be really good for her to talk to a licensed third-party person — that’s not me,’” Cabay said.
Her daughter’s counseling journey started off shaky because she was seeing a counselor weekly for two months with no results, while paying out-of-pocket. So they found a counselor who was a much better fit. Within six months, Cabay’s daughter had made so much progress that Cabay decided to suspend her weekly visits.
Determining when it’s time for professional help can be hard, especially because counseling can require a significant commitment of time and money. Therapists offer three easy-to-remember criteria to help assess challenging behavior: frequency, duration, and intensity.
1. Frequency: Is the behavior happening over and over?
Frequency is the easiest of the three to measure. Say you roll up to the park to find a hive of activity on the playground, but your child refuses to get out of the car because they’re anxious about playing with other kids. If it happens once or twice, it could be because they had a hard day and weren’t ready to be with other kids, said licensed clinical social worker and play therapist Paris Goodyear-Brown. But avoidance behavior that occurs regularly indicates a child may need extra support.
2. Duration: Does the behavior last a long time?
Goodyear-Brown is clinical director of Nurture House in Franklin, Tennessee, where parents often come with concerns when their children start preschool and are anxious about saying goodbye to them, she said. Some amount of separation anxiety is developmentally appropriate. If it regularly lasts hours, however, she generally recommends pulling in professional support.
“The child may be crying, ‘Mommy, don’t leave me,’ but as soon as the parent has departed, they enjoy the day and they’re engaged with their teachers,” she said. “That’s a really different presentation than the child who cries for three hours at school, is inconsolable, and isn’t able to learn.”
3. Intensity: Does the behavior disrupt everyday life?
Intensity can be harder to quantify because it’s less likely to be measured in hours or days. Goodyear-Brown offers obsessive-compulsive behaviors as an example: If a child won’t leave the house without making sure all their toys are lined up just right or checking 10 times to make sure the doors are locked before bed, their behavior signals a need for professional help.
Children can also show intensity in their lack of emotions. “To be numbed out, shut down, dissociated, it’s just as big,” she said. “It’s just quieter.”
Goodyear-Brown said some life events are intense enough to merit counseling even if a child isn’t behaving differently, including those considered one of the 10 “adverse childhood experiences.” ACEs, as they’re more commonly known, include child abuse, neglect, suicide or depression in the household, or divorce.
Guidance, Not Certainty
Ultimately, the three criteria help parents assess whether behavior is overly disruptive to daily life. Becky Evans, a licensed professional counselor supervisor in Fort Worth, Texas, advised being on alert for the times when “you are not able to go and do what you would normally go and do because of whatever is happening with them emotionally.”
But whether the verdict points to counseling also depends on household dynamics and family history.
“It is kind of subjective to the person. What feels frequent? What feels intense? And how long is too long for this to have been going on?” Evans said.
When in doubt, she said, therapy is usually helpful. And parents can also benefit from having a “teammate,” to ensure they’re not inadvertently reinforcing the anxiety, Goodyear-Brown said.
However, some psychologists have raised concerns about “pathologizing” children or interpreting routine struggles as disorders. Parents can be quick to think developmentally appropriate behavior is abnormal, said Christina Confroy, a licensed marriage and family therapist in Nashville, Tennessee. During consultation calls, she’s grown comfortable telling parents when she doesn’t see a need for counseling while also urging them to “trust their sense.”
People and Policy
Like many counselors across the country, Confroy has stopped accepting health insurance. For her, the decision hinged on the requirement to make an official diagnosis in order to get paid. The administrative burden and low reimbursement rates have driven many others to leave insurance networks behind.
Paying for counseling out-of-pocket averaged nearly $150 per session in 2023, according to research published in Health Affairs Scholar. Confroy charges $195 per 50-minute session. She lowers the fee when the need arises, she said.
“People don’t plan for counseling the way they plan for groceries. It’s an enormous responsibility financially and time-wise,” said Confroy, who often recommends school-based counseling and other lower-cost first steps.
“You might not want another podcast to listen to or a book to read,” she said. “But I’m really big on accessing existing support.”
This installment is part of HealthQ’s reporting on caregiving among the sandwich generation. For more, check out the series archive.
Katherine Ruppelt and Emily Siner at Nashville Public Radio contributed to this report.
HealthQ is a health series from reporters Cara Anthony and Blake Farmer, approachable guides to an unapproachable healthcare system. It’s a collaboration between Nashville Public Radio and KFF Health News.
