Mental Health & Illness: Anxiety & Anxiety Disorders - Essay Example

Andrews and Hunt (1998) contend that mild to moderate levels of anxiety improve one’s ability to cope, hastens reaction time and makes for better understanding leading to more appropriate responses. Eventually, anxiety helps one achieve mastery of stressful situations and makes one feel fulfilled at that outcome after undergoing such arousal and tension before the important event. This is due to the endorphins released by the brain (Gorman, 2005) which makes one feel good when he has survived the stress.

It is however warned that anxiety should not become so severe that it becomes debilitating for the person. Just as moderate levels of anxiety helps one cope, high levels may reduce his capacity to plan, to make accurate judgments and decisions, carry out skilled tasks where before they excelled at or even comprehend simple and useful information (Andrews and Hunt, 1998). Extreme levels of anxiety may come to Anxiety disorders. These are not just one illness but a group of illnesses characterized by nagging feelings of high anxiety, severe discomfort and tension that it actually interferes with an individual’s daily life in a significant manner rendering him unable to do what he normally does and wants to do (National Mental Health Strategy, n.d.).

Glazer (2005) enumerates five major types of anxiety disorders as classified by the National Institute of Mental Health as Panic disorder; Post-traumatic stress disorder; Generalized anxiety disorder; Obsessive-compulsive disorder; and Phobias. These share common symptoms of excessive anxiety but have their own specific symptoms exclusive to each too, The Mental Health Association, NSW (2005) have come up with a number of possible causes of Anxiety Disorders. One is an imbalance of certain brain chemicals/hormones.

An example would be neurotransmitters controlling the ‘fight or flight’ responses in times of emergencies. A chemical imbalance may mean the individual