Anxiety Disorders: Inner State of Turmoil - Essay Example

Anxiety
Anxiety can be defined as an inner state of turmoil that is often accompanied by nervous behavior such as somatic complaints, rumination, and pacing back and forth. Anxiety is the expectation of future threat where a person feels fear, uneasiness, and worry and in some cases, it, is usually, generalized. Anxiety is experienced by most people from time to time as they are afraid of facing things that are uncertain. It is vital to distinguish between fear and anxiety, fear is said to be short-lived present-focused, and facilitates escape from the threat, and is always geared towards a specific threat. Anxiety, on the other hand, is long-acting future-based and focuses on diffusing the threat; hence, promoting excessive caution while approaching a potential threat. Four domains have been created to differentiate anxiety and fear, and they include first, duration of emotional experience, specificity of the threat, temporal focus, and motivation direction.

Thirdly, there is a social anxiety disorder that is commonly referred to as social phobia, it involves overwhelming self-consciousness and worries about social situations that occur every day. The worry that happens in this disorder is mostly centered on being judged by other people or behaving in a way that may lead to ridicule or embarrassment. Fourthly, specific phobias such as intense fear of a situation or object such as exams, snakes, heights, and flying among others. Lastly, there is Generalized anxiety disorder that involves unrealistic tension and worries even in situations where there is nothing to worry about or to provoke anxiety.

Symptoms of an anxiety disorder include problems while sleeping, dry mouth, heart palpitations, nausea, numbness or tingling in the feet or hand, shortness of breath.
Other symptoms include feelings of fear, panic, and uneasiness, inability to be still and calm, muscle tension, and dizziness. According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America(2014), anxiety disorders are the most common mental illnesses in the United States that affect 40 million adults at the age of 18, and older making it about 18% of the United States population (Rynn, Vidair & Blackford, 2012). However, it has been established that women are more prevalent of getting anxiety disorders compared to men. For example, women are twice likely to get generalized anxiety disorder, specific phobias, and panic disorder compared to men. Social anxiety disorder seems to vary when it comes to prevalence because it has been established that men and women are affected equally by the disorder at around the age of thirteen.

Treatments of anxiety vary depending on the intensity of the disorder in patients, as well as, patient’s preference. However, the most common treatments include medications, which include clonazepam, lorazepam, and diazepam. Self-treatment, which includes stress management, mediation, relaxation techniques, and exercise among others. Psychological counseling, which includes cognitive behavior therapy and psychotherapy. Anxiety disorder can be prevented by regularly exercising, eating healthy foods, keeping a regular sleep pattern, avoiding alcohol and other hard drugs, and reducing the intake of tea, caffeine, and chocolate consumption.