What Is It?
Anxiety disorders include generalised anxiety, social anxiety, separation anxiety and phobias. Major depressive disorder involves persistent sadness, withdrawal, and loss of motivation. Both profoundly impair a child's ability to learn, form relationships, and develop.
What the Data Shows in Victoria
The Young Minds Matter national survey (2013–14) found 13.9% of children aged 4–17 had a mental disorder in the past 12 months, with anxiety disorders the most prevalent. AIHW corroborates this, and the Youth Self-Harm Atlas separately maps depression and anxiety disorders among 12–17 year olds at the PHN and SA3 level, showing significant regional variation across Australia.
How It Affects Learning & Development
Anxiety activates the brain's threat-detection systems, crowding out the prefrontal cortex activity required for concentration, memory encoding, and reasoning. A child in chronic anxiety cannot easily absorb new information, retain lessons, or participate in classroom discussion. Depression compounds this through fatigue, anhedonia, and social withdrawal.
Key Impact Areas
Anxiety is the primary driver of school refusal — children avoid the environments that trigger their distress.
Worry consumes cognitive resources needed for learning, reducing effective working memory capacity.
Withdrawal from peers stunts social skills and creates loneliness feedback loops.
Untreated anxiety correlates with lower NAPLAN scores and reduced Year 12 completion rates.
Groups Most at Risk
Who attends school in Victoria?
2,310 schools · 1,067,614 students
These indicators highlight student groups that research shows are at higher risk of wellbeing challenges and may require additional support. Averages are across all schools in Victoria.
of students in schools fall in the lowest quarter of socio-educational advantage nationally
average proportion of Indigenous students across schools — a group with documented higher wellbeing needs
of students have a language background other than English (LBOTE) — requiring culturally aware wellbeing approaches
Source: ACARA National School Profile, data as at March 2025. ICSEA ranges from ~500 to ~1300; national average is 1000. Equity figures are school-level averages, not student-weighted.
How schools in Victoria can respond to anxiety & depression in school-aged children
Schools across Victoria face anxiety & depression in school-aged children as a documented wellbeing challenge, yet it often remains invisible until it becomes a crisis. When student wellbeing is measured systematically, patterns become visible weeks before they escalate — giving educators, counsellors, and families the chance to act.
The difference between reactive crisis response and proactive prevention is timely, localised data. That window is where prevention lives.