Anxiety

Head | Psychiatry | Anxiety (Disease)


Description

Anxiety is a psychological condition with cognitive, somatic, emotional, and behavioral components.

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.

Causes and Risk factors

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 refer 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 fear of dying is very intense and is often present.

The behavioral effects of anxiety include withdrawal from situations which have provoked anxiety in the past. Anxiety is considered to be a normal reaction to a stressor.

Anxiety takes several forms: phobia, social anxiety, obsessive-compulsive, and post-traumatic stress. When anxiety becomes excessive, it may fall under the classification of an anxiety disorder or another psychological disorder such as depression.

Diagnosis and Treatment

Anxiety disorders respond very well to treatment—and often in a relatively short amount of time. The specific treatment approach depends on the type of anxiety disorder and its severity. But in general, most anxiety disorders are treated with behavioral therapy, medication, or some combination of the two. Sometimes complementary or alternative treatments may also be helpful. ...