Welcome to Mind the Kids, the ACAMH podcast where research meets real-world practice in child and adolescent mental health. In this episode, 'Anxiety, does the apple fall far from the tree?', Dr. Jane Gilmour and Professor Umar Toseeb explore whether anxiety runs in families, what the latest research says about clinically anxious parents and children’s anxiety disorders, and how genetic, environmental, and family factors may shape risk.

Joining them is Dr Sigrid Elfström, lead author of a population-based study published in the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry. The conversation also looks at why diagnosis is not destiny, why prevention matters, and how to communicate risk without parent blaming.

They discuss whether anxiety can be transmitted through family processes, what the findings mean in practice, and how clinicians and parents can think about risk without assuming it is deterministic.

This episode covers: Children’s anxiety disorders. Clinically anxious parents. Parent-child mental health. Genetic and environmental influences. Family processes and prevention. Evidence-based child mental health research.

Read the paper 'A detailed investigation of anxiety disorders in children of clinically anxious parents: a population-based study' - https://doi.org/10.1111/jcpp.70085
Sigrid Elfström, Susanne Wicks, Christina Dalman, Johan Åhlén
First published: 04 December 2025

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