When a Child Is Afraid to Eat: Coping With Allergy Anxieties

Sara Schaefer Munoz:

In fourth grade, Brentson Duke went grocery shopping with his mom, and when he saw a sign above the aisle that said "peanut butter," he had a bout of anxiety so severe it set off an asthma attack.

"I tried to talk him through it and said 'words won't hurt,' " says his mother, Laura, a day-care administrator outside Nashville, Tenn. But soon after that incident two years ago, Brentson grew so anxious he wouldn't return to the supermarket, and he begged to skip school. His mom says his pediatrician eventually prescribed Valium to control his frequent panic attacks.

The source of Brentson's anxiety: A couple months before, he had had an allergic reaction to peanuts at school, which made his throat swell and landed him in the emergency room.

As the number of children diagnosed with life-threatening food allergies grows, so does an insidious side effect: the extreme anxiety they can develop around eating, socializing or even a trip to the supermarket. The problems can come after a bad allergic reaction, or simply as children grow old enough to comprehend that their allergy can be fatal.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at October 7, 2007 12:00 AM
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