A Report On Anxiety Disorders, Its Types, Symptoms And Treatment
I’m sure many people have felt anxious at one point in their life either when stressing over an exam, work or even a personal situation because it is normal to do this in life. Now imagine always feeling that anxious on a daily, many people suffer from this disorder known as anxiety. Anxiety disorders vary but according to “Psychology in Action,” are a group of psychological disorders characterized by disabling fear or anxiety, accompanied by physiological arousal and related behavioral disturbances. There are three major types of this disorder, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), panic disorder, and phobias.
GAD symptoms are chronic, excessive fear and worry about activities or events or even daily routines, it’s difficult to control and can affect you physically. According to the Mayo Clinic, this often occurs along with other anxiety disorders or depression. Panic disorder symptoms involve recurrent episodes of “sudden feelings or intense anxiety and fear or terror that reach a peak within minutes (panic attacks).” Some may have shortness of breath, chest pain, or a rapid fluttering or a pounding heart (heart palpitations). “These panic attacks can lead to worrying about them happening again or avoiding situations where they’ve occurred.” There are three types of phobias one can have, agoraphobia, specific phobias, and/or social phobias. Agoraphobia is having fear or avoidance of embarrassing or inescapable situations in large open or public spaces, like being in an elevator or on a crowded bus or train. This can lead to having panic attacks. Specific phobias is a fear of a specific object or situations that may not occur in your everyday life which wouldn’t affect your day to day living, like snakes or heights. Social phobias is a fear of embarrassment or being judged or viewed negatively by others in social situations like public speaking, which may cause you to avoid social situations.. According to Christian Nordqvist, “a phobia becomes diagnosable when a person begins organizing their lives around avoiding the cause of their fear.”
Anxiety disorders get built up psychologically, biologically or sociocultural. Psychological can be from faulty cognitions or maladaptive learning, which is being told from a young age negative or inaccurate information that causes your mind to convince you that something is true. Anxiety that’s biologically transferred can be from evolutionary predispositions, genetic predispositions or biochemical disturbances, like experiences and the environment around you. Sociocultural can be caused from cultural pressures which is the attitudes, belief or behaviors from a group/ culture. According to Sean P. Egen, The most common illness in the United States is anxiety disorders. 40 million Americans over the age of 18 suffer from anxiety. “Of those 40 million people, almost 7 million of them suffer from GAD, with 15 million suffering from social anxiety disorder, 14.8 suffering from major depressive disorder, and 7.7 million affected by post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).”
There are many treatments and home remedies on can do if diagnosed with a certain anxiety disorder. One treatment is cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) which the mayo clinic staff describes as the most effective form of psychotherapy for anxiety disorders. This focuses on “teaching you specific skills to improve your symptoms and gradually return to the activities you’ve avoided because of anxiety.” Also helps by making you “gradually encounter the object or situation that triggers your anxiety so that you build confidence that you can manage the situation and anxiety symptoms.” As someone who has suffered from anxiety before his method definitely helped me. Anxiety can lead to depression and becoming anti-social which is what happened to me during my senior year of high school. I started becoming overwhelmed with my grades and the “applying for college” process that I started to isolate myself from my friends and classmates which caused me to become anti-social and have anxiety when meeting someone new and trying to avoid social interactions. When starting college I eventually came across the fact that meeting new people is normal and is a beneficial thing so to try to prevent getting anxiety I stopped thinking about if this person is going to judge me or not and started to encounter situations that I would usually avoid which would help me gain confidence for any future interactions or situations I come across that would cause be to have anxiety. Some “lifestyle and home remedies” can be eating healthy, keeping yourself more active, getting enough sleep to feel well rested, and if you smoke or drink alcohol or do recreational drugs avoid it cause that may be the cause of your anxiety and can make it worse.
In conclusion, many people suffer from anxiety disorders and aren’t sure how to overcome it. Having an anxiety is not a fun experience at all especially because it can highly affect your mental health and when that happens you should definitely see a doctor and find a way to help your decrease your anxiety so that it doesn’t affect your day to day life.
Work Cited
- Egen, Sean P. “8 Facts about Anxiety and Anxiety Disorders.” Elements Behavioral Health. 10 Jan. 2016. www.elementsbehavioralhealth.com/mental-health/8-facts-anxiety- anxiety-disorders/
- Huffman, Karen “Psychology in Action.” 12th Edition. Mayo Clinic Staff. “Anxiety Disorders,” Mayo Clinic. 04 May 2018 www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/anxiety/symptoms-causes/syc-20350961
- Nordqvist, Christian. “Everything you need to know about phobias.” Medical News Today. Last Updated 20 Dec. 2017. www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/249347.php
