Separation anxiety disorder is fear organized around a person rather than a place or a performance. The worry is that something will happen to an attachment figure — a partner, a parent, a child — or that you'll be separated from them permanently. It produces reluctance to travel, to sleep away from home, or to be alone, and it often comes with physical symptoms when separation is anticipated.

Until 2013 it was defined as a childhood disorder. DSM-5 moved it into the anxiety disorders chapter and removed the childhood-onset requirement, which changed who can be diagnosed. The data behind that change matters: the National Comorbidity Survey Replication estimated a lifetime prevalence of 6.6% for adult separation anxiety disorder and 4.1% for the childhood form, and found that 77.5% of adult cases had first onset in adulthood — not carried over from childhood at all.

That history explains the main clinical problem. Because the diagnosis was unavailable in adults for so long, adults with these symptoms were routinely assigned to panic disorder, agoraphobia, or generalized anxiety disorder instead. Those labels aren't absurd — the presentations overlap — but they point treatment at the wrong target. Agoraphobia is fear of situations where escape is difficult. Separation anxiety is fear of being apart from a specific person. Someone can leave the house comfortably with their partner and not at all without them, and that pattern is diagnostic.

The disorder also travels with other conditions. Panic disorder, agoraphobia, and mood disorders co-occur frequently, and separation anxiety is sometimes what remains after those have been treated and something still isn't right.

Dr. Farkas brings MD/PhD neuroscience training, NIH research center experience, and board-certified psychiatric practice to that sorting. Her 30–60 minute evaluations are built to identify what the fear is actually organized around before treatment is aimed at it.

A new patient evaluation with Dr. Farkas runs 30–60 minutes. It covers your psychiatric and medical history, when the fear started and what was happening at the time, who it centers on, what you've stopped doing because of it, and every medication tried and how each one went.

You'll leave with a specific diagnosis explained in plain terms, a treatment plan you understand and agree with, and a follow-up already scheduled. Telehealth is available throughout South Carolina and New York. In-person appointments are available at the Hilton Head Island, SC office.