Anxiety Disorder

What Is an Anxiety Disorder?

Most people experience feelings of anxiety before an important event, such as a big exam, business presentation, or first date. An anxiety disorder, however, is an illness that fills people's lives with overwhelming anxiety and fear that are chronic and unremitting, and that can grow progressively worse. Tormented by panic attacks, obsessive thoughts, flashbacks of traumatic events, nightmares, or countless frightening physical symptoms, some people with the condition even become housebound.

 

Anxiety disorders, as a group, are the most common mental illness in America. More than 19 million adults in America are affected by these debilitating illnesses each year. Children and adolescents can also develop them (see Anxiety in Children).

 

Types of Anxiety Disorders

There are several conditions related to extreme anxiety. These anxiety disorders include:

 

Each anxiety disorder has its own distinct features, but they are all bound together by the common theme of excessive, irrational fear and dread.

Social anxiety disorder is the most common, with 15 percent of the American population afflicted by it. It is characterized by a persistent fear of social or performance situations.

 

In social situations, people with social anxiety disorder become nervous. They feel that people are looking at them, that they're not saying the right things, and that they don't look right. These people can become painfully shy and begin to avoid social situations. As a result, they don't have as many friends as they could. This disorder also affects a person's ability to perform at work, because many jobs involve speaking in front of other people and being in group meetings where you are expected to make a contribution. As a result, social anxiety disorder can have a broad effect on a person's life.

 

This disorder is different from shyness. Shyness is a temperament. Some people are more shy than others. Social anxiety disorder, on the other hand, produces impairment.

 

PTSD is a reaction to a terrifying event that keeps returning in the form of frightening, intrusive memories. The traumatic event could be something you see or something that happens to you directly.

 

PTSD produces an intense fear and a sense of helplessness. People with this anxiety disorder can become detached and emotionally numb. They may feel guilt for surviving. The survivors wonder, "Why me?" They also often have problems sleeping.

 

PTSD is fairly common. At some point in their lives, 40 to 80 percent of people are exposed to a serious, traumatic event. At any given time, 8 percent of the people in the United States has PTSD.

 

Everyday events and decisions cause exaggerated worry and tension in people with generalized anxiety disorder. These people are "worrywarts." They feel the world in general is not a safe place and that bad things happen to good people like themselves. They are always feeling distressed. They become restless, fatigued, irritable, and tense.

 

People with generalized anxiety disorder have chronic, moderate levels of symptoms associated with lots of worrying. However, they don't have panic attacks that send them to the emergency room. About 6 percent of the U.S. population suffers from this condition.

People with panic disorder have recurrent, unexpected feelings of extreme fear and dread that strike for no apparent reason, causing their heart to race, rapid breathing, sweating, and shakiness. These "attacks" can send people to the hospital, believing they are having a heart attack.

 

These panic attacks can come right out of the blue for no apparent reason -- even when you're not in a situation that would normally make you feel stress, anxiety, or fear.

 

People with this type of anxiety disorder often avoid places where they've had panic attacks, and in severe cases, may become housebound. Approximately 2 to 4 percent of the people in America suffer from panic disorder.

 

People who suffer from OCD become trapped in a pattern of repetitive thoughts and behaviors that are senseless and distressing but that are also extremely difficult to stop. If severe and left untreated, OCD can destroy a person's capacity to function at work, at school, or even in the home. OCD affects more than 2 percent of the country's population.

 

Causes of Anxiety Disorder

Scientists aren't quite sure why some people get an anxiety disorder and other people don't. Different people exposed to the same situation can react in very different ways. Part of this difference may be in the genes they have inherited.

 

Anxiety disorders run in families, so if a parent has an anxiety disorder, the children have a higher chance of developing one of these conditions. This may be due to the genes they've inherited, but the environment a child is raised in may be important, too. Ultimately, it's probably a combination between a person's genetic predisposition and environment.

 

Scientists have recently been gaining insights into the development of anxiety disorders. Children of parents with panic disorders have a higher incidence of behavioral disorders early in life, before you would think major environmental impacts would occur.

 

A growing body of evidence shows that infants who tend to be shy, timid, and constrained in social situations -- even in the first few weeks of life -- have higher rates of anxiety disorders when they get older.

 

What Are the Symptoms?

Symptoms of an anxiety disorder can differ, based on the specific condition a person has. However, all are linked together by common symptoms that include excessive, irrational fear and dread. Because these are also possible symptoms of other conditions, people who believe they have symptoms of an anxiety disorder are encouraged to see a doctor for proper diagnosis and treatment.

 

Treatment Options for Anxiety Disorder

Treatments for anxiety disorders are extremely effective and often combine medication and psychotherapy. More medicines are available than ever before to effectively treat these conditions. These include antidepressants and benzodiazepines. If one medication is not effective, you and your doctor can discuss others.

 

The two most effective forms of psychotherapy used to treat anxiety disorders are behavioral therapy and cognitive-behavioral therapy. Behavioral therapy tries to change actions through techniques such as breathing exercises or through gradual exposure to what is frightening. Cognitive-behavioral therapy teaches people to understand their thinking patterns so that they can react differently to the things that cause them anxiety.