Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety Disorders: In psychological disorders Anxiety disorders are main group. Anxiety is experienced by every person in his daily life. Anxiety stimulates us to take actions—like watching our weight, preparing for exams, showing up to work on time. Although anxiety is commonly experienced but the anxiety disorders creates significant distress. Anxiety disorders are the most common among all psychological disorders. It is estimated that 25%–30% of the U.S. population during their lifetime meets the criterion for at least one anxiety disorder. Anxiety disorders are experienced more in women than men.

Anxiety disorders beside other psychological disorders include phobias, social anxiety disorder, panic disorder and generalized anxiety disorder.

Phobia: phobia is Greek word which means fear. People with specific phobia experienced distressing and persistent fear or anxiety of a specific object and situation. So people with specific phobia avoid the object or situation which creates anxiety in them. Some common phobias are listed below:

Phobia.               Feared object 

Acrophobia        heights

Aerophobia        flying

Arachnophobia  spiders

Claustrophobia  enclosed spaces

Cynophobia.       dogs

Ophidiophobia   snakes

Taphophobia      bieng buried alive

Trypanophobia   injections

Xenophobia.      Strangers

 

So phobias are psychological disorders which are learned.

 

 

Social Anxiety Disorder (previously known as social phobia) is characterized by persistent and extreme anxiety or fear. The person avoids the social situations in which he feels that he could potentially be assessed negatively by others.

Panic Disorder: Individuals with panic disorder experience persistent (more than one) and unexpected panic attacks. The person also experience one month of constant concern about additional panic attacks. He worried about the consequences of the attacks, or self-defeating modifications in behavior associated to the attacks. During the panic attack is a person feels excessive sweating, rapid heartbeat and dizzy etc without any solid physical chase and the person feels that he is having a heart attack.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder : Is a relatively continuous state of excessive, uncontrollable, and pointless worry and apprehension. Persons with generalized anxiety disorder often worry about routine, everyday things, even though their concerns are unjustified.

Treatments: Anxiety disorders are curable with many psychotherapies.

Behaviour therapies are useful in these.

For the treatment of phobias exposure therapy, systematic decensitization gives desired results. For anxiety disorders muscle relaxation techniques are very useful. For panic disorder and generalized anxiety disorder CBT can also be used.