Anxiety Disorder

Even if many normal life situations are likely to cause anxiety, only when worrying becomes pervading can specialists diagnose a nervous disorder. By anxiety disorder, we would normally imply a range of ailments characterized by panic bouts and constant restlessness about something. Even if anxiety attacks are not a threat from a simple anatomical perspective, they have a very harmful impact on the psyche and leave traumas. In most of the patients who suffer from an anxiety disorder, the ailment specificity consist of recurrent panic attacks that one constantly fears like in a vicious circle.

An anxiety disorder usually appears on the background of a hereditary predisposition to irritant factors from the environment. Hence, traumatic events, medical procedures, certain drugs, extended stress or abrupt changes can become the trigger of a panic attack and the root of an anxiety disorder. This means that people who have just gone through a very intense life experience that has marked them in a negative way, are prone to developing an anxiety disorder from an initial panic attack.

How does an anxiety disorder evolve from an accidental panic attack? Well, the first terrifying experience with all its symptoms, creates a sensitivity at the level of the central nervous system. Once such an event marks one’s life, the person becomes more sensitive to external threats. The fear that a panic attack is about to strike you, may actually cause a real anxiety bout even if the initial symptoms you identified were not related to the episode. Even in the absence of an external trigger to explain the appearance of panic episodes, the person often starts fearing the anxiety symptoms as such and gives them rather catastrophic proportions.

Behavioral and cognitive therapies provide the best treatments for anxiety disorder cases. The use of antidepressants or tranquilizers is just a temporary relief method and should not be used for long periods of time. In fact, such medication can only be administered only under close medical monitoring. If other therapy forms are not used in parallel with drug administration, symptoms may very well return when the treatment is over and the anxiety disorder could thus progress to more severe forms.

Filed Under: Anxiety