Anxiety Disorders

Fear is a normal reaction to an external source of danger. It is appropriate to the source of danger in its intensity and duration, and dissipates when action is taken to escape or avoid the source of danger.

Anxiety is a reaction to a real or imagined threat, a general feeling of uneasiness or dread.
Everybody has experienced some anxiety -- butterflies in your stomach, tension, or a pounding heart. Anxiety that rouses you to action is the facilitating or motivating kind. It gets you going. It helps you cope.

An anxiety disorder does just the opposite, it keeps you from coping and disrupts your daily life. This kind of anxiety is the debilitating kind, it paralyses and immobilizes the person. Anxiety involves tension, apprehension and terror about real or imagined danger... the source of which is unknown. There are several types of anxiety disorders, each with its own distinct features.

An anxiety disorder may make you feel anxious most of the time, without any apparent reason. Or the anxious feelings may be so uncomfortable that to avoid them you may stop some everyday activities. Or you may have occasional bouts of anxiety so intense they terrify and immobilize you.

Situational Anxiety occurs in response to a specific stress and ends after the stress is removed. Free-floating Anxiety involves apprehension that is not linked to any specific situation or event.

The degree of anxiety is much more a function of the individual's coping skills than the degree of stress. The risk of anxiety increases with stress, a family history of neurosis, fatigue or overwork, or the recurrence of situations that have been previously stressful or harmful.

Signs and Symptoms:

Feeling that something undesirable or harmful is about to happen (edginess and apprehension).
Dry mouth, swallowing difficulty, hoarseness.
Dizziness, light-headedness
Rapid breathing, increased heartbeat, palpitations.
Twitching, trembling or shaking
Muscle tension.
Feeling of choking
Aches and pains: headache, backache.
Sweating.
Difficulty concentrating.
Dizziness or faintness.
Nausea
Stomach distress. diarrhea. weight loss.
Sleeplessness.
Irritability.
Fatigue.
Nightmares.
Memory problems.
Sexual impotence.
Feelings of unreality
Feelings of being detached from self
Fear of loss of control
Fear of dying

Factoids

Mental Illnesses impose a multibillion dollar burden on the economy each year. Total economic costs amounted to $147.8 billion in 1990. More than 31 percent of those costs are for anxiety disorder.
(The Economic Burden of Affective Disorders, Dorothy P. Rice, Sc.D., and Leonard Miller, Ph.D., 1993

References and Links:
information on this page and the follow-up pages listed below has been taken with permission from:

American Psychiatric Association. Public Information: Let's Talk Facts
        Pamphlet Series
        http://www.psych.org/main.html
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Vol. IV American
        Psychiatric Association. 1994
Drug Package Inserts
National Institute of Mental Health
        http://www.nimh.nih.gov/about/index.cfm
National Mental Health Association.. Information Fact Sheets
        http://www.nmha.org/
Physicians' Desk Reference, 1999.

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