Rev 1 Kristina The Anxiety of Children with Special Needs

The Anxiety of Children with  Special Needs

By Kristina

Students with special needs have a relatively more sensitive personality compared to normal students. They require special attention and treatment. However, in terms of daily life, student with special needs live in social environment and socialize with others like normal students. Anxiety often occurs to student with special needs while socializing.

Student with special needs is a student with specifically different mental, social, emotional, or physical characteristics from those of a normal student (Lakshita, 2017:7). Student with special needs is classified into several categories namely: student with visual impairment, student with hearing impairment, student with speech impairment, student with intellectual disability, student with physical impairment, student with emotional and social impairment, and gifted student. Every student falling under each category has their own level of social anxiety along with its characteristics.

Students with visual impairment tend to be more alert in crowded places due to their lack of vision. They get nervous when finding orientation and moving in new environment. Such nervous feeling can be interpreted as high level of alertness as they try to perceive their environment using nonvisual technique, by optimizing their hearing and/or touching ability on their surroundings.

Students with hearing impairment are those with significant difficulty in understanding normal conversation despite using hearing aids (Garnida, 2017:8). Students with such condition are prone to misunderstand messages delivered in communication, leading to suspicion towards other people. They develop highly sensitive feelings upon their interlocutor.

Students with intellectual impairment experience trouble in mental development. Their chronological age does not match their mental maturity. Such condition significantly affects their personal and social life. They find it hard to complete simple tasks such as eating and drinking without assistance from others. These students often have limited language ability and adaptive functioning. Therefore, they tend to lack the interest and ability required in social interaction and is unresponsive as well as dependent when socializing with others.

Anxiety is emotional response towards perceived view, indicating the feeling of fear, nervousness, and insecurity accompanied by various physical responses. It may occur in various contexts of situation or due to illnesses. Additionally, it may trigger repetitive physical reactions such as upset stomach, shortness of breath, heart palpitation, sweating, dizziness, and sudden urge to urinate or defecate. These reactions often followed by the urge to escape the source of anxiety (Stuart and Sundeen, 1998).

Anxiety is nonspecific signs and reactions resulted from autonomous nervous system activity upon uncertain, nonspecific, as well as of found threat, and usually is a normal emotional response (Carpenito, 2000). A study shows that anxiety is negatively related to student’s academic result. Physically, anxiety may cause dizziness, nausea or diarrhea, extreme change in body temperature, excessive sweating, shortness of breath, heart palpitation, dry mouth, and/or fainting. Emotionally, anxiety may result in excessive or extreme fear, anger, and/or disappointment, leading to uncontrollable depression, crying, or laughter as well as hopelessness. In terms of behavior, anxiety leads to worrying, pacing back and forth, substance abuse, and use of offensive language. Whereas, in cognitive aspect, anxiety may lead to vacant mind, difficulty in concentrating, negative self-talk, fear, the act of comparing oneself to others, and trouble in controlling thoughts.

Freud (Calvin S. Hall, 1993) identified three types of anxiety namely: realistic anxiety, defined as fear of threats or dangers from the real-world or environment. Neurotic anxiety, defined as fear of instincts or subconscious urges that may lead to punishment. The fear is not of the instincts but rather the punishment incurred by such instincts in the event that they are acted upon. This anxiety is developed due to childhood experiences of threats and punishments received from parents or person with authority when the subject acted impulsively. Moral anxiety, defined as fear of violating moral code (superego). People with good superego tend to feel guilty or ashamed when they act or think contradictory to their moral code. Similar to neurotic anxiety, this type of anxiety is developed due to childhood experiences of threats and punishments received from parents or person with authority when the subject violated the norms. Furthermore, there is another type of anxiety called traumatic anxiety. It is defined as anxiety that cannot be managed effectively. People with this condition experience hopelessness and emotional immaturity.

In the case of person’s ego is incapable of mitigating anxiety rationally, such person will take unrealistic measures known as self-defense mechanism such as: repression, projection, reaction formation, fixation, and regression. These forms of self-defense mechanism share common characteristics namely: (1) the mechanisms deny, fake, or distort reality; (2) the mechanism works subconsciously, making the subject unaware of actuality. Anxiety may occur to anyone anywhere, including to students at school. Students may experience realistic, neurotic, or moral anxiety. The condition is a psychological process. Therefore, to determine whether or not a student suffers from anxiety, thorough examination of symptoms or signs as well as the risk factors must be carried out. However, it is worth noting that the obvious symptoms are merely part of the actual problem. They are the tip of the iceberg; there are bigger and more complex problems beneath the surface.

References

Garnida, Dadang. 2017. Modul Pembinaan Karier Guru Tunagrahita Kelompok Kompetensi A, Pedagogik: Karakteristik Anak Berkebutuhan Khusus Profesional: Konsep Dasar Program Pengembangan Diri Anak Tunagrahita. Bandung: PPPPTK TK dan PLB Bandung.

Lakshita, Nattaya. 2012. Belajar Bahasa Isyarat untuk Anak Tunarungu (Dasar). Yogyakarta: Javalitera

Setiawan, A. & Astuti, W (2018). Development of Children’s Anxiety Test Special Needs, Proceeding International Seminar on Education UST 2018, Yogyakarta