Monday, January 27, 2025
Based on your responses to the questions in the Symptom Checker, here are some conditions you may
want to learn more about. This page is designed to help you be informed and guide you towards next steps.
It is important to understand that these results are not a diagnosis. If information on a particular disorder
appears in your results, it does not necessarily mean that your child meets the criteria for that disorder. It
does mean that you reported symptoms associated with that disorder. Also, please keep in mind that each
disorder shown in your results is independent of any other, so consider each on it’s own.
Remember, these results are purely educational and are not intended to replace the advice, diagnosis, or
treatment offered by a medical or mental health professional. If you believe your child has a psychiatric
or learning disorder, please consult a professional.
If someone you know is expressing suicidal thoughts, we encourage you to call 988 immediately.
Major Depressive Disorder
Major depressive disorder (often referred to as clinical depression) is a mood disorder
characterized by periods of profound sadness and feelings of hopelessness. People with
major depressive disorder may experience extended periods of relative normal mood
between episodes of depression.
Related Resources
Quick Facts on Major Depressive Disorder
Treatment for Depression
What to Do if You Think Your Teenager Is Depressed
How to Help Kids Who Are Too Hard on Themselves
What to Do if You’re Worried About Suicide
Social Anxiety Disorder
Social anxiety disorder, or social phobia, is characterized by persistent and excessive
self-consciousness about being judged negatively by others and avoidance of anything
that may cause humiliation.
Related Resources
Quick Guide to Social Anxiety Disorder
What Is Social Anxiety?
Behavioral Treatment for Kids With Anxiety
Tips for Managing Social Anxiety
Best Anxiety Medication for Children and Teens
Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Children with generalized anxiety disorder experience pervasive worry about a variety
of everyday things. In children the anxiety is often focused on performance in school or
sports.
Related Resources
Quick Guide to Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Behavioral Treatment for Kids With Anxiety
Best Anxiety Medication for Children and Teens
What to Do (and Not Do) When Children Are Anxious
How Does Anxiety Affect Kids in School?
Anorexia Nervosa
Anorexia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by severe weight loss, a
significantly low body weight, intense fear of getting fat, and a distorted body image that
drives an otherwise high-functioning person — usually a young woman — to starve
herself.
Related Resources
Quick Guide to Anorexia Nervosa
What Is an Eating Disorder and When to Worry
Family-Based Treatment for Eating Disorders
How to Help Your Daughter Have a Healthy Body Image
Complete Guide to Eating Disorders in College
Bulimia Nervosa
Bulimia nervosa is an eating disorder characterized by out-of-control eating offset by
fasting, extreme exercise or purging — voiding food by self-induced vomiting or other
means. Kids with bulimia, unlike those with anorexia, often maintain a healthy weight
but the way they go about it is very unhealthy.
Related Resources
Quick Guide to Bulimia Nervosa
What Is an Eating Disorder and When to Worry
What Are the Different Kinds of Eating Disorders?
Family-Based Treatment for Eating Disorders
Complete Guide to Eating Disorders in College
Adjustment Disorder
Adjustment disorder is an unusually strong or long-lasting reaction to a stressful event
such as divorce, a death in the family, or moving to a new house or school.
Related Resources
Quick Guide to Adjustment Disorders
When Kids Refuse to Go to School
Signs of Trauma in Children
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How Trauma Affects Kids in School
Autism Spectrum Disorder
Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is characterized by social communication deficits and
restricted, repetitive patterns of behavior and interests. ASD appears in early childhood,
though it may not be immediately apparent and there is a wide range of impairment.
Related Resources
Quick Guide to Autism Spectrum Disorder
What Should an Evaluation for Autism Look Like?
What Is Applied Behavior Analysis (ABA)?
Why Autism Diagnoses Are Often Delayed
Why Many Autistic Girls Are Overlooked
Separation Anxiety Disorder
Children with separation anxiety disorder experience extreme distress when they are
separated from parents or caregivers. Besides fearing separation itself, these children
may worry that something horrible will happen to them or their family members when
they are apart.
Related Resources
Quick Guide to Separation Anxiety Disorder
What Is Separation Anxiety?
Behavioral Treatment for Kids With Anxiety
When Kids Refuse to Go to School
How to Avoid Passing Anxiety on to Your Kids
Panic Disorder
Panic disorder is characterized by repeated, unpredictable panic attacks that can include
feelings of impending death and heart attack-like symptoms, such as palpitations,
shortness of breath and dizziness. Attacks may be triggered by a variety of cues, and fear
of an attack can trigger a fresh one.
Related Resources
Quick Guide to Panic Disorder
Panic Attacks and How to Treat Them
Agoraphobia in Children
Behavioral Treatment for Kids With Anxiety
Best Anxiety Medication for Children and Teens
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder
Children with obsessive-compulsive disorder are plagued by unwanted and stressful
thoughts and fears which they try to alleviate by performing compulsive rituals like
counting or washing their hands.
Related Resources
Quick Guide to Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
Complete Guide to OCD
Why Behavioral Therapy Is the Best Way to Treat OCD in Kids
The Parents’ Role in OCD Treatment
How to Help Kids Worried About ‘Bad Thoughts’
Sleep-Wake Disorders
Sleep-wake disorders is an umbrella term for more than a dozen specific conditions that
impair the quality or quantity of sleep a child gets enough to undermine her overall
health and functioning. The most common of these disorders in children and adolescents
is insomnia, or difficulty falling asleep and/or staying asleep.
Related Resources
Quick Guide to Sleep-Wake Disorders
Complete Guide to Teenagers and Sleep
Quick Facts on Insomnia
ADHD and Sleep Disorders: Are Kids Getting Misdiagnosed?
Encouraging Good Sleep Habits
Why Are Teenagers So Sleep-Deprived?
Hoarding Disorder
A person with hoarding disorder will not only acquire objects in great excess, but also
feel unable or unwilling to part with them, causing great personal and family distress.
Related Resources
Quick Guide to Hoarding Disorder
Hoarding in Children
Behavioral Treatment for Kids With Anxiety
Best Anxiety Medication for Children and Teens
What to Do (and Not Do) When Children Are Anxious
Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder
Children with ADHD have a persistent pattern of inattention or hyperactivity and
impulsivity that exceeds the typical range for the child’s age and interferes with his
functioning.
Related Resources
Quick Guide to Attention-Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD)
Complete Guide to ADHD
Is It ADHD or Immaturity?
Stimulant Medications for ADHD
Behavioral Treatments for Kids With ADHD
Specific Phobia
Specific phobia is an excessive and irrational fear of an object or situation not normally
considered dangerous. Children with specific phobia aren't anxious in general; they only
become so when confronted with the particular thing that causes them terror.
Related Resources
Quick Guide to Specific Phobia
What to Do (and Not Do) When Children Are Anxious
Behavioral Treatment for Kids With Anxiety
What Is Emetophobia (Fear of Vomiting)?
Best Anxiety Medication for Children and Teens
Selective Mutism
Selective mutism (SM) is an anxiety disorder in which a child is unable to speak in some
settings and to some people. A child with SM may talk normally at home, or when alone
with her parents, but cannot speak at all, or speak above a whisper, in other social
settings, including at school.
Related Resources
Quick Guide to Selective Mutism
Complete Guide to Selective Mutism
‘Brave Talking’ Helps Kids Beat Selective Mutism
When Should Medication Be Used to Treat Selective Mutism?
Teacher’s Guide to Selective Mutism
Body Dysmorphic Disorder
Body dysmorphic disorder is characterized by an excessive concern over either a very
minor or completely imagined “flaw” in one's appearance, not including weight.
Related Resources
Quick Guide to Body Dysmorphic Disorder
What Is Body Dysmorphic Disorder?
Behavioral Treatment for Kids With Anxiety
Best Anxiety Medication for Children and Teens
What to Do if You’re Worried About Suicide
Excoriation Disorder
Excoriation disorder is characterized by recurrent skin picking, resulting in skin lesions.
Some children with the disorder say that picking at their skin makes them feel good, but
not all children affected by the disorder do it intentionally, or even consciously.
Related Resources
Quick Guide to Excoriation Disorder
What Is Excoriation, or Skin-Picking?
What to Do (and Not Do) When Children Are Anxious
Behavioral Treatment for Kids With Anxiety
Best Anxiety Medication for Children and Teens
Trichotillomania
Trichotillomania is characterized by the urge to pull out hair from the scalp or other
parts of the body, including the eyelashes, brows, genitals, back, arms and legs. Kids
often pull hair out unconsciously.
Related Resources
Quick Guide to Trichotillomania
What Is Trichotillomania?
What to Do (and Not Do) When Children Are Anxious
Behavioral Treatment for Kids With Anxiety
Best Anxiety Medication for Children and Teens
Oppositional Defiant Disorder
Children and adolescents with oppositional defiant disorder (ODD) are persistently at
odds with authority figures, are very quick to lose their tempers, and have trouble
getting along with others.
Related Resources
Quick Guide to Oppositional Defiant Disorder
What Is Oppositional Defiant Disorder (ODD)?
Choosing a Parent Training Program
How to Give Kids Effective Instructions
What Parents Should Know About Risperdal
Binge Eating Disorder
While everyone may overeat occasionally, a child with binge eating disorder regularly
consumes unusually large quantities of food in relatively short periods of time, with the
feeling that her overeating is out of her control.
Related Resources
Quick Guide to Binge Eating Disorder
What Are the Different Kinds of Eating Disorders?
Family-Based Treatment for Eating Disorders
How to Help Your Daughter Have a Healthy Body Image
College Students and Eating Disorders
Somatic Symptom Disorder
Children with somatic symptom disorder worry excessively about physical symptoms
that are fairly routine, such as headaches, stomachaches, nausea or fatigue, which they
interpret as signs of serious illness.
Related Resources
Quick Guide to Somatic Symptom Disorder
Behavioral Treatment for Kids With Anxiety
What to Do (and Not Do) When Children Are Anxious
How Does Anxiety Affect Kids in School?
Best Anxiety Medication for Children and Teens
Bipolar Disorder
Bipolar disorder, also known as manic depressive disorder, involves bouts of depression
and periods of mania. Symptoms of mania include euphoria, poor judgment and extreme
risk-taking.
Related Resources
Quick Guide to Bipolar Disorder
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