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Separation anxiety disorder matters because it names fear of separation from attachment figures that is excessive for the person's developmental stage, and it is now recognised in adults as well as children. It is diagnosed as developmentally inappropriate and excessive fear or anxiety about separation from major attachment figures, such as a parent or spouse. For example, imagine an eight-year-old who refuses to attend school and develops stomach aches every morning specifically because he cannot bear being away from his mother. In practice, the key word is inappropriate, since some separation anxiety is a normal part of early childhood development.

Features include persistent worry about losing an attachment figure or them coming to harm, reluctance to go to school or elsewhere from fear of separation, nightmares involving separation, and repeated physical symptoms such as headaches or nausea when separation is anticipated. Normal developmental separation anxiety typically peaks around ages one to three and resolves as the child matures, whereas separation anxiety disorder is disproportionate, persistent, and causes significant functional impairment. Both DSM-5 and ICD-11 now allow the diagnosis in adults, where it can present as excessive worry about a partner's safety or reluctance to be apart from them. Picture an adult who cannot travel for work without frequent, anxiety-driven phone calls checking on her partner's whereabouts. In practice, recognising this pattern in an adult, not just a child, is a relatively recent and testable change in the classification.

• A boy stays at home each morning, distressed and with his parents' knowledge, and completes his schoolwork. How does this differ from truancy?
• Childhood separation anxiety disorder is most strongly associated with which adult disorder?
• How long must separation-related fear persist in a child before ICD-11 allows the diagnosis?

• Normal developmental separation anxiety, an expected, self-resolving phase peaking around ages one to three, unlike separation anxiety disorder's persistent, impairing pattern.
• Generalised anxiety disorder, worry spread across many unrelated domains, rather than separation anxiety disorder's worry focused specifically on attachment figures.
• School refusal from social anxiety disorder: driven by fear of scrutiny at school, whereas separation anxiety disorder's school refusal is driven by fear of leaving the attachment figure.
• Separation anxiety disorder, now diagnosable in adults, unlike the older assumption that it applied to children only.

• Academic ability is often intact in school refusal, so attainment does not separate the two.
• Selective absence around examinations is not what distinguishes the two patterns.
• Concealment and lack of distress describe truancy, the pattern being contrasted here.
• Conduct disorder is more often linked to truancy than to anxiety-based refusal.
• No specific link exists between separation anxiety and later paranoid schizophreniaA long-term mental illness involving episodes of psychosis such as hallucinations and delusions.Read more →.

• Extract the defining phenomenology, duration, severity and functional-impact clues.
• Match the pattern to the most specific diagnostic or assessment construct.
• Actively test the closest look-alike against the missing or contradictory clue.
• Choose the precise term rather than a broader category that is merely compatible.