Anxiety Disorder

What is anxiety disorder?

Anxiety is a fear or apprehension about some adverse event in future. It is a response to anything that bothers you or anything that you may feel will result in a big problem. Generally certain level of anxiety is experienced by everyone. But in some people the degree of anxiety crosses the normal level. It may become excessive and irrational. For example, few hours before the meeting some new people, some individuals get very anxious. Many of us have stage fear and feel anxious moments before coming on the stage and facing the audience. Often we hear children saying that they had studied everything but forgot everything after entering the school examination hall. Feeling intensely anxious beyond a certain limit such that it starts harmfully affecting one’s health can be termed as Anxiety Disorder.

Cause of Anxiety disorder

Anxiety disorder is a common form of illness seen among adults as well as children. Some are not even aware about their abnormality and continue with their fears or various phobias. In America, approximately around 40 million adults suffer from anxiety disorder. Anxiety disorder occurs in an individual due to biological reasons; bad experiences in life. At times, it is present due to genetic inheritance. Also there are cases where people have developed this disorder due to some other physical or mental ailments.

Types of anxiety disorder

Some types of anxiety disorder are described below

Generalized anxiety disorder

Many times people worry for no reason. GAD (Generalized Anxiety Disorder) is much more than normal anxiety that one faces in day to day lives. It is an exaggerated worry or tension about anything even if there is no reason for such behavior or a feeling. Experiencing such disorder provokes the patients to worry about future disasters such as health problems, family, money or work etc. The fear of facing any disastrous situations or loss in future leads the patient to experience Generalized Anxiety Disorder. GAD is generally accompanied with physical symptoms such as trembling, twitching, muscle tension, headaches, irritability, sweating, frequent urination, poor concentration and depression in some cases.

Panic disorder

Panic disorders are very harmful and much intense compared to other anxiety disorders. It should receive medical attention or treatment. In such disorders, patients are generally aware about their abnormal anxiety. Patient experiences panic disorders as having a heart attack or losing control or on the threshold of death. The attacks may strike the patient anytime even during sleep or fully awake state. Panic attacks is accompanied with symptoms such as feel sweaty, weak, faint, dizzy or chest pain, feeling of heart attack or stroke, losing control, a sense of unreality, depression etc. It is highly essential to undergo an appropriate treatment for such disorders as it might be highly fatigue in many cases.

Phobias

Phobias are nothing but irrational fear about a certain object or a situation. It is something like fear of a cockroach in spite of the knowledge that cockroaches can’t cause any direct harm to humans. Other popular phobias are fear of entering any closed place like an elevator. Even patients are aware about their irrational fears but a thought of facing their feared objects or situations may provoke anxiety or panic attacks.

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Obsessions are disturbing thoughts or a vision of certain objects or situations whereas compulsions are the patterns of behavior expected in any situation which if not followed creates anxiety. Such type of a disorder is very common among people and most of the times remain undiagnosed. Some of the common symptoms of OCD include checking door locks several times while leaving the house, washing hands frequently etc. OCD is not a matter of concern until it interferes in daily routine or hinders normal behavior.