Anxiety Disorder

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Anxiety Disorder

What is Anxiety? As defined by Understanding Psychology by Glencoe, Anxiety is a general state of dread or uneasiness that a person feels in response to a real or imagined danger. Anxiety affects 19 million Americans annually and anxiety disorder happens to be the most common mental illness in America. There are many different types of anxiety disorder such as: Panic Disorder, Obsessive – Compulsion Disorder, Phobias, and a few more. Although there is no cure for anxiety disorders, there are treatments to reduce symptoms.

Panic Disorder is a type of anxiety disorder that consists of feelings of sudden fear, overwhelming fright, and fear of death. Panic disorder can be inherited, but it can also be the result of a stressful event that happened shortly before the feelings of panic occurred. Symptoms of panic disorder are some of the following: chest pains, heart palpitations, and shortness of breath, dizziness, and feelings of unreality, a sense of smothering, choking, and nausea. Many of these symptoms could occur to a person without having panic disorder at all. The attacks of panic disorder are often called “panic attacks.” Panic attack victims all stated that the panic attack lasted for what felt like several hours, but in actuality the attacks only last for a couple minutes. People that deal with panic disorders often have the phobia of never wanting to leave home also known as agoraphobia.

Panic disorder is very treatable and can be treated either by cognitive behavioral therapy, medication, or a combination of both. Cognitive behavioral therapy consist of talking about how the patient is feeling during a panic attack, and also putting the person in a stressful situation and helping them v...

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... that the anxiety disorder does not progress and become worse. Also anxiety can exist with another mental or physical disorder such as substance abuse, eating disorders, depression and many more. Also in rare cases cancer and heart disease can be accompanied by anxiety disorders. Often people just think about anxiety disorder as just one disorder but anxiety disorder as states before has many different types and each of these different types are characterized by different symptoms.

Works Cited

http://www.healthieryou.com/anxiety.html

http://www.helpguide.org/mental/panic_disorder_anxiety_attack_symptom_treatment.htm

http://www.anxietypanic.com/ocdfacts.html

http://www.anxietypanic.com/phobiafacts.html

http://phobialist.com/

http://psychology.about.com/od/phobias/f/dis_phobiadef.htm

http://helpguide.org/mental/phobia_symptoms_types_treatment.htm

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