The Anxiety Arrives in Secondary School

What the research found

Giovagnoli and colleagues set out to answer a narrow question with care. Do children with developmental dyslexia carry more internalising symptoms, meaning anxiety, low mood, and physical complaints such as headaches or stomach aches, than children without dyslexia? And if they do, when does this begin? To find out, the researchers compared pupils at two stages of schooling rather than lumping all ages together.

The first study looked at 234 Italian schoolchildren aged eight to sixteen: 65 with a diagnosis of dyslexia and 169 without. The children completed self-report questionnaires about their own worries and feelings. This matters. The researchers asked the children themselves, not their parents or teachers, which tends to surface internal distress that adults miss.

The central result was about timing. In primary school, dyslexic children looked much like their peers. There were no significant differences in anxiety or low mood, and not a single primary-age dyslexic child reached the clinical threshold for depression. Only about five per cent reached the threshold for anxiety. The picture in secondary school was different. There, 23.9 per cent of dyslexic pupils scored at clinically relevant levels for anxiety, against 2.8 per cent of their classmates without dyslexia. For low mood, 15.2 per cent of dyslexic secondary pupils reached clinical levels, against 3.7 per cent of controls. Within the dyslexic group itself, anxiety was significantly higher in secondary school than in primary school.

A second, smaller study of 95 adolescents examined why some struggled more than others. Here the researchers found that high internalising symptoms in dyslexic teenagers were linked to low self-esteem and a low sense of self-efficacy, that is, a weak belief in one’s own ability to cope and succeed. Dyslexia on its own did not reliably predict distress. It was dyslexia combined with these psychological vulnerabilities, and with a tendency towards hypervigilance, that marked out the children who suffered most.

Two cautions belong in the same breath as these figures. The second study drew from a technical institute that was almost entirely male, so its findings describe boys and cannot be assumed to hold for girls. And the whole project was cross-sectional. The researchers photographed different children at different ages; they did not follow the same children over time. So the study shows that older dyslexic pupils are more anxious than younger ones, but it cannot prove that a given child’s anxiety grows as they age, nor that dyslexia is the cause. The authors are clear about this, and so should we be.

What it means for you and your child

If your child has dyslexia and seems settled and cheerful in primary school, this study offers reassurance and a warning in equal measure. The reassurance is that early anxiety is not inevitable; many young dyslexic children carry no more worry than their peers. The warning is that the secondary years appear to be the pressure point. That is when reading demands rise, when comparison with classmates sharpens, and when, in this sample, clinical anxiety became roughly eight times more common in dyslexic pupils than in others.

The most useful thread to pull is the one about self-esteem. The study did not find that dyslexia mechanically produces anxiety. It found that anxiety clustered in the children who also felt they could not cope or succeed. That distinction carries a quiet hope. A learning difference cannot be wished away, but a child’s belief in their own capability is something adults can nurture, protect, and rebuild. The authors themselves conclude that support should aim at motivation, self-esteem, and good relationships with peers, not reading skill alone.

In practice, this means watching for the physical and emotional signs, not only the academic ones. Stomach aches before school, reluctance, a flatness that was not there a year ago: these can be the shape distress takes in a child who has learned not to complain about the reading itself. Because the pupils in this study reported on their own inner states, the study is a reminder to ask your child directly and gently how school feels, rather than inferring it from marks.

Hold the numbers at their proper weight. This is one well-conducted study of a few hundred Italian children, weighted towards boys in its second half, capturing a moment rather than a trajectory. It cannot tell you what will happen to your particular child, and it does not prove that dyslexia causes anxiety. What it does establish is a pattern worth taking seriously: the secondary transition is a sensitive period for dyslexic pupils, and the children most at risk are those whose confidence has thinned. Good teaching addresses the reading. Good support also tends the child underneath it.