Does Anxiety Run in Families? Clinically Anxious Parents and Children’s Anxiety. A Mind the Kids pod

Welcome to Mind the Kids, the ACAMH podcast on child and adolescent mental health, psychology, parenting, and evidence-based practice. In this episode, 'Anxiety, does the apple fall far from the tree?' Dr Jane Gilmour and Professor Umar Toseeb speak with Dr Sigrid Elfström Kriss about a population-based study on anxiety disorders in children of clinically anxious parents.

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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