The Dyslexic Students Scored Higher for Anxiety

What the research found

This is a single study of 205 schoolchildren in the Beni Mellal-Khenifra region of Morocco. Fifty-six were dyslexic readers; 149 were not. All were Arabic-speaking pupils in ordinary schools. The dyslexic group averaged 12.1 years of age; the comparison group averaged 11.7. The researchers asked each child to complete three questionnaires: Taylor’s scale for anxiety, Beck’s inventory for depression, and the Coopersmith inventory for self-esteem. They then compared the two groups.

The differences were large. On anxiety, the dyslexic children scored an average of 28.7, against 18.0 for their peers. Nearly three-quarters of the dyslexic group, 72.7 per cent, fell into the “severe to very severe” band. On depression, the dyslexic average was 36.5 against 25.1, and 94 per cent of the dyslexic children scored in the severe range. Self-esteem showed the same pattern in reverse: dyslexic children averaged 17.3 where their peers averaged 36.6, and 82 per cent of the dyslexic group registered low self-esteem, compared with 17 per cent of the others. Every one of these gaps was statistically significant, meaning it is unlikely to be an accident of who happened to be in the sample.

The authors also combined the three measures into a single count of “psychiatric comorbidity” — children who were both highly anxious or depressed and low in self-esteem. Here the contrast was starkest of all: 62.5 per cent of the dyslexic children met this combined threshold, against 5.6 per cent of the comparison group. In plain terms, emotional distress clustered heavily in the dyslexic children and was uncommon in the others.

Two features of the design deserve emphasis, because they set the limits on what the numbers can tell us. First, this is a cross-sectional study. It photographs both groups at one moment. It cannot show whether dyslexia leads to distress, whether distress worsens reading, or whether some third factor drives both. The order of events is invisible here. Second, every result rests on the children’s own answers to standardised questionnaires. The authors name this themselves as the study’s major limitation: such scales, they write, “do not always correspond to the observed reality.” There was no clinical interview, no diagnosis by a psychiatrist, and no independent check on the self-reports.

A few further cautions. The two groups were not balanced by sex — the dyslexic group was mostly boys, the comparison group mostly girls — and sex can influence how children report mood. The sample is modest, drawn from one region of one country, and the dyslexic group in particular is small at 56 children. None of this makes the findings wrong. It means they describe a strong association in this specific group, measured one way, at one time.

What it means for you and your child

The honest headline is this: in this study, dyslexia and emotional distress travelled together, and closely. That matches a wider and more established picture. Many children who struggle to read carry a quiet weight — the daily experience of finding hard what classmates find easy, and of not always understanding why. A parent who senses low mood or anxiety alongside a reading difficulty is not imagining a link.

But be careful about the size of the numbers here. Ninety-four per cent in the severe depression band is an extraordinarily high figure, well above what most research on dyslexia reports. It very likely reflects this particular sample, these particular questionnaires, and the cultural setting in which they were answered, rather than a rate you should expect in your own child. Treat the direction of the finding as informative and the exact percentages as local to this study. One piece of research, however striking, does not fix a number to your family.

What this study cannot tell you is just as important as what it can. It cannot tell you that dyslexia caused any individual child’s anxiety. It cannot tell you that treating the reading will lift the mood, or that treating the mood will improve the reading. The design does not reach those questions. Anyone who cites this paper to promise that one intervention solves both problems is reading more into it than the data hold.

The practical takeaway is gentler and more durable. Reading support and emotional wellbeing are best watched together, not in separate boxes. The authors’ own conclusion is a call for a “multidisciplinary approach” — teaching help and attention to how a child feels, side by side. That is sound advice quite apart from the specific figures. If your child is receiving help with literacy, it is reasonable to ask how their confidence and mood are being kept in view, and to raise it directly with a teacher, an educational psychologist or your GP if you have concerns.

For our part, the value of a study like this is not that it settles anything. It is a well-conducted snapshot that points, once more, in a consistent direction: children who find reading hard are more likely to struggle emotionally too. The response is not alarm but attention — noticing early, supporting the whole child, and keeping expectations proportionate to what a single small study can actually show.