Reasons Behind Anxiety Disorders Essay

Reasons Behind Anxiety Disorders Essay

Anxiety is a normal, but highly subjective, human emotion. While normal anxiety serves a beneficial and adaptive purpose, anxiety can also become the cause of tremendous suffering for millions of people. Working from a biopsychosocial perspective, this article provided an overview of the origin and functional purpose of normal anxiety. The biological, psychological, and social factors that contribute to the formation and maintenance of (pathological) anxiety disorders were presented. The various anxiety disorders, theories, and associated treatments were reviewed.Reasons Behind Anxiety Disorders Essay  The treatment for anxiety disorders is based on a solid scientific foundation, grounded in research by experts from diverse fields. The research has investigated these biological, social, and psychological factors that contribute to anxiety disorders. This broad research base has led to the development of numerous, empirically-based treatments that have proven to be highly effective. As a result, thousands of courageous individuals have reclaimed their health, restored their functioning, and now enjoy richly rewarding and satisfying lives. The future remains optimistic for those who struggle with anxiety. We are confident that advancements in the treatment of anxiety disorders will continue to bring hope and relief to the people, and families, affected by these disorders.Reasons Behind Anxiety Disorders Essay

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Everybody knows what it’s like to feel anxious — the butterflies in your stomach before a first date, the tension you feel when your boss is angry, and the way your heart pounds if you’re in danger. Anxiety rouses you to action. It gears you up to face a threatening situation. It makes you study harder for that exam, and keeps you on your toes when you’re making a speech. In general, it helps you cope.
But if you have an anxiety disorder, this normally helpful emotion can do just the opposite — it can keep you from coping and can disrupt your daily life. There are several types of anxiety disorders, each with their 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.

Anxiety disorders are the most common of all the mental health disorders. Considered in the category of anxiety disorders are: Generalized Anxiety Disorder, Panic Disorder, Agoraphobia, Social Phobia, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Specific Phobia, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, and Acute Stress Disorder. Anxiety disorders as a whole cost the United States between 42-46 billion dollars a year in direct and indirect healthcare costs, which is a third of the yearly total mental health bill of 148 billion dollars. In the United States, social phobia is the most common anxiety disorder with approximately 5.3 million people per year suffering from it. Approximately 5.2 million people per year suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Estimates for panic disorder range between 3 to 6 million people per year, an anxiety disorder that twice as many women suffer from as men. Specific phobias affect more than 1 out of every 10 people with the prevalence for women being slightly higher than for men. Obsessive Compulsive disorder affects about every 2 to 3 people out of 100, with women and men being affected equally.Reasons Behind Anxiety Disorders Essay

Many people still carry the misperception that anxiety disorders are a character flaw, a problem that happens because you are weak. They say, “Pull yourself up by your own bootstraps!” and “You just have a case of the nerves.” Wishing the symptoms away does not work — but there are treatments that can help.
Anxiety disorders and panic attacks are not signs of a character flaw. Most importantly, feeling anxious is not your fault. It is a serious mood disorder, which affects a person’s ability to function in every day activities. It affects one’s work, one’s family, and one’s social life.Reasons Behind Anxiety Disorders Essay

Today, much more is known about the causes and treatment of this mental health problem. We know that there are biological and psychological components to every anxiety disorder and that the best form of treatment is a combination of cognitive-behavioral psychotherapy interventions. Depending upon the severity of the anxiety, medication is used in combination with psychotherapy. Contrary to the popular misconceptions about anxiety disorders today, it is not a purely biochemical or medical disorder.

There are as many potential causes of anxiety disorders as there are people who suffer from them. Family history and genetics play a part in the greater likelihood of someone getting an anxiety disorder in their lifetime. Increased stress and inadequate coping mechanisms to deal with that stress may also contribute to anxiety. Anxiety symptoms can result from such a variety of factors including having had a traumatic experience, having to face major decisions in a one’s life, or having developed a more fearful perspective on life. Anxiety caused by medications or substance or alcohol abuse is not typically recognized as an anxiety disorder.Reasons Behind Anxiety Disorders Essay

We have developed the information here to act as a comprehensive guide to help you better understand anxiety disorders and find out more information about them on your own. Choose from among the categories at left to begin your journey into recovery from this treatable disorder.

A feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease, typically about an imminent event or something with an uncertain outcome. This is the definition for anxiety from a text book stand point. Someone that has or has experienced anxiety would describe it differently. An anxiety problem can be developed through genetics, past life events, and personality. Anxiety can be broken down into six different branches: generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, phobia, post-traumatic stress disorder, and social anxiety disorder. People with generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) often have increased anxiety over something that shouldn’t create worry. Such as thinking about having to get through the day.Reasons Behind Anxiety Disorders Essay

This paper is going to be about anxiety disorders. I am going to explain what anxiety is and the different types of anxiety disorders. The types of anxiety I am going to talk about are Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Post-Traumatic Stress, Panic Disorder and Social Phobia. Anxiety is a normal reaction to stress. It helps some one deal with a tense situation in the office, study harder for an exam, keep focused on an important speech. In general, it helps some one cope. But when anxiety becomes an excessive, irrational dread of everyday situations, it has become a disabling disorder. Anxiety disorders are serious medical illnesses that affect approximately 19 million American adults. These disorders fill people’s lives…show more content…
You may spend long periods touching things or counting. Most adults with this condition recognize that what they’re doing is senseless, but they can’t stop it. Some people, though, particularly children with OCD, may not realize that their behavior is out of the ordinary. Post-Traumatic Stress: PTSD affects about 5.2 million adult Americans. Women are more likely than men to develop this disorder. It can occur at any age, including childhood, and there is some evidence that shows PTSD may run in families. The disorder is often accompanied by depression, substance abuse, or one or more other anxiety disorders. PTSD is an anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to a terrifying event in which grave physical harm occurred or was threatened. Traumatic events that may trigger this anxiety include violent personal assaults, natural or human-caused disasters, accidents, or military combat. People that suffer from PTSD have persistent frightening thoughts and memories of the frightening event and feel emotionally numb. This especially happens with people they were once close to. They may experience sleep problems, feel detached or numb, or be easily startled.Reasons Behind Anxiety Disorders Essay

Causes of Social Anxiety Disorder

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girl not wanting to be socialPeople are exposed to huge amounts of stress each day. Problems at work, dysfunctional relationships, insurance issues, taxes, children’s misbehavior, and so on—these typical misfortunes can upset anyone. However, there is a psychological problem that can make one’s life excessively complicated even on its own, without adding up the aforementioned factors. This problem is social anxiety; unfortunately, the modern world is permeated with these factors, which contribute to the development of this psychological disorder.Reasons Behind Anxiety Disorders Essay

Although the environment we live in definitely has an effect on how people feel, it is important to consider the biological factors leading to social anxiety disorder (SAD). In particular, biologists believe SAD is related to a dysfunction of brain circuits responsible for regulating emotions and the “fight or flight” response center (WebMD). There is a brain structure called the amygdala; it is known to play a role in controlling the fear response. If a person has an overactive amygdala, they often display an excessive “fear” type of emotional response; therefore, whenever a situation occurs that can be interpreted as even slightly uncomfortable, a person with SAD will overreact in terms of fear (Mayo Clinic). In addition, genetic factors should also be considered when studying the causes of SAD, because social anxiety may occur when it was also present in a first-degree relative: parent, sibling, or child.Reasons Behind Anxiety Disorders Essay

Another significant group of factors responsible for the development of SAD is a group of environmental factors, including psychological climates. The first social interactions people make in their lives are usually connected to parents; from them, people learn basic social rules, what is acceptable and what is not, how it is like to be loved and to be ignored, and so on. Based on what happened in their childhood, people construct their personal systems of beliefs, including assumptions on what other people think about them. Commonly, if a child is loved and respected by parents, he or she later assumes that other people treat them in the same way; however, if a child is often criticized, it prevents him or her from developing a sense of personal value, and for such people, it is more difficult to become socially confident (Overcoming).

In addition, the way parents deal with different life situations also influences children’s personality. According to Cheryl Carmin, a psychiatrist and director of the clinical psychology training program at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center, parents are often responsible for developing social anxiety in a child. “A parent or a significant adult figure may model that it’s appropriate to be anxious in situations where your performance will be evaluated […]. For example, a parent who is commenting on being nervous about a performance review or who tells their child to not be anxious before their first “show and tell” may be priming the child to, in fact, be anxious in that situation. It’s also quite possible that any number of these factors interact,” says Dr. Carmin (Live Science).Reasons Behind Anxiety Disorders Essay

The reasons why people develop social anxiety are different, but generally they can be divided into two categories: biological and environmental. A biological group of reasons includes dysfunctions in brain work, as well as excessive “fight or flight” reactions. Environmental factors include psychological influences caused by parents on their children, as well as the models that parents provide in the form of teaching their children consciously or unconsciously. Reasons Behind Anxiety Disorders Essay