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Anxiety Disorders
Home >> Anxiety Disorders
Disorders which are characterized by persistent and impairing presence of anxiety, worry and tension fall under the umbrella of Anxiety Disorders.
1. Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Generalized anxiety disorder: is a condition where a person experiences ongoing and excessive worry and anxiety for at least prominent six months, making it difficult to control and interfering with daily activities. In many cases it can occur with general anxiety and mood disorders.
The symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder can vary, such as
- Overthinking plans and solutions to all possible worst-case outcomes.
- Indicisiveness and in ability to relax.
- Perceiving situations and events as threatening, even when they aren’t.
- Fatigue and difficulty concentrating.
- Physical signs may include:
- Trouble sleeping.
- Muscle tension or muscle aches.
- Trembling, feeling twitchy.
- Nervousness or being easily startled.
- Sweating, nausea, and irritability.
2. Panic Disorder
Panic disorder is a type of anxiety disorder characterized by recurrent and unexpected panic attacks—which are sudden periods of intense fear that peak within minutes and can last for upto 20 minutes. Symptoms include palpitations, sweating, trembling, shortness of breath, feeling of choking, chest pain, nausea, dizziness, chills, or hot flashes, and a fear of losing control or dying. To be diagnosed, at least 4 or more of the above symptoms must be observed and these attacks must be followed by at least one month of persistent concern about having another attack, worry about the implications of the attacks, or significant changes in behavior to avoid future attacks. The timeline varies; some individuals may experience only one or a few episodes while others may have frequent attacks over many years.
3. Phobias
Phobias are an intense fear of certain situations or objects. This is one of the types of Anxiety disorder. Some of these fears may make sense, such as a fear of snakes. But often, fear or anxiety is out of proportion to the actual danger posed by the specific object or situation and to the sociocultural context. In phobias the person avoids the phobic situation or objects. This disturbance is not better explained by the symptoms of other mental disorders.
There are different types of Phobias:
- Specific phobia: A person shows strong and persistent fear that is triggered by the presence of a specific object or situation and leads to significant distress and/or impairment in a person’s ability to function.
Subtypes of specific phobia include animal, nature environment, blood-injection-injury, situational, etc. - Social phobia: Also known as social anxiety disorder. It is characterized by disabling fears of one or more specific social situations. A person fears that she or he may be exposed to the scrutiny and potential negative evaluation of others or that she or he may act in an embarrassing or humiliating manner. This also leads to significant distress and/or impairment in a person’s ability to function.
Timline: The fear, anxiety or avoidance is persistent and typically lasts for 6 months or more.
4. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)
OCD is characterized by:
Obsessive thoughts: Automatic and repetitive thoughts which interfere with a person’s functionality and cause impairment in his day-to-day life. These thoughts may occur in words, images or motion-images form.
Compulsive actions: When obsessive thoughts generate distress, a person may undertake certain actions to negate the distress. These actions are often ritualistic and repetitive, and tend to consume time and energy.
Presence of obsessive thoughts or compulsive actions or both need to be present more or less persistently for a period two weeks, and cause impairment in functioning for a clinician to diagnose OCD.
Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD)
PTSD is a complex mental health concern which a person may experience after suffering an event that is traumatic in nature or after being a witness of an event as it happened to others (e.g. witnessing death of a loved one, or an accident). PTSD is diagnosed with recurrent, involuntary, and intrusive distressing memories of the incident and/or recurrent dreams distressing dreams, dissociative flashbacks during which a person may act as-if the event is occurring with them in that moment, prolonged psychological distress and accompanying physiological reactions. A person suffering PTSD may engage in avoidance behaviours such as avoiding people, situations, or places that might cue memories of the trauma and they may suffer negative cognitive alterations such as memory and concentration disturbances, grossly negative beliefs about self, distorted cognitions about traumatic event and their projection on the future. A person may suffer depressive spells as a part of PTSD. PTSD is a grossly disabling disorder which must be diagnosed, addressed and treated when one notices even one of the above features.
