Adjustment Disorder, Anxiety, Depression
Head | Psychiatry | Adjustment Disorder, Anxiety, Depression (Disease)
Description
Anxiety is a psychological condition with cognitive, somatic, emotional, and behavioral components Anxiety is considered to be a normal reaction to a stressor. Anxiety takes several forms: phobia, social anxiety, obsessive-compulsive, and post-traumatic stress.
The physical symptoms that are associated with anxiety are: palpitations, chest pains, a feeling of tightness in the chest, and a tendency to overbreathe. Muscle tension leads to headaches and back pains. Dry mouth, bloating, diarrhea, nausea, and difficulty in swallowing are gastrointestinal symptoms. Other symptoms include sweating, blushing, pallor, lightheadedness, and a frequent need to urinate or defecate.
The emotional effects of anxiety include feelings of apprehension or dread, trouble concentrating, irritability, restlessness, feeling tense and jumpy, anticipating the worst, watching and waiting for signs of danger, and, feeling like your minds gone blank as well as nightmares, obsessions about sensations, deja- vu and feeling like everything is scary.
The cognitive effects of anxiety may refers at thoughts about dangers, such as fear of dying. Other fears can be that the chest pains are a deadly heart attack or that the shooting pains in the head are caused by a tumor or aneurysm.
The behavioral effects of anxiety include withdrawal from situations which have provoked anxiety in the past. The emotional effects of anxiety include feelings of apprehension or dread, trouble concentrating, irritability, restlessness, feeling tense and jumpy, anticipating the worst, watching and waiting for signs of danger, and, feeling like your minds gone blank as well as nightmares, obsessions about sensations, deja- vu and feeling like everything is scary.
Causes and Risk factors
A stressor is generally an event of a serious, unusual nature that an individual or group of individuals experience. The stressors that cause adjustment disorders may be grossly traumatic or relatively minor, like loss of a girlfriend/boyfriend, a poor report card, or moving to a new neighborhood. It is thought that the more chronic or recurrent the stressor, the more likely it is to produce a disorder. The objective nature of the stressor, however, is of secondary importance. Stressors most crucial link to their pathogenic potential is their perception by the patient as stressful.
Various factors have been found to be more associated with a diagnosis of AD than other Axis I disorders, including: younger age, more identified psychosocial and environmental problems, increased suicidal behaviour, less frequent previous psychiatric history.
Diagnosis and Treatment
When anxiety becomes excessive, it may fall under the classification of an anxiety disorder or another psychological disorder such as depression. The treatment is individualized, several approaches have proved effective: therapy, medicat...