Anxiety

Anxiety disorders are one of the most common psychological disorders in the United States. Defined by the psychology text book, Anxiety is “a class of disorders marked by feelings of excessive apprehension and anxiety.” Anxiety is comprised of general and social anxiety disorders, posttraumatic stress, and obsessive compulsive disorders.

Anxiety starts primarily in the late teens to early twenties, and rare before the age of fourteen and after the age of thirty five (Sheehan, p12). It occurs in at least five percent of the population at one given time, where as one percent is to a disabling degree. Research by the National Institute of Mental Health shows anxiety is “The number one mental health problem in American women and is only second to alcohol and drug abuse by men.” Eighty percent of women with anxiety are in there childbearing years. 40% - 50% of patients with anxiety are also clinically depressed (Davidson, p66).

“There is no question that the problem of anxiety is a nodal point at which the most various and important questions converge, a riddle whose solution would be bound to throw a flood of light on our whole mental existence.” (Sigmund Freud, Lectures on Psychoanalysis) Everyone has the “Fight or Flight” reaction to danger, or what the mind perceives as danger. In which the sympathetic branch of our autonomic nervous system turns on high.

The main anxiety neurotransmitters are serotonin and nor epinephrine and GABA (Gamma-Amino Butyric Acid) which can cause anxiety, on a biological level of overacting, being deficient, or connecting the wrong messages. Davidson states that anxiety is clearly “a failure of communication.” Due to the fact that neurotransmitters are the basic unit of communication in the brain, and that if anxiety and depression are primarily caused by those neurotransmitters, the results are in unremitting fear, panic, phobias, and other anxiety or stress disorders.

There are both biological and psychological forces involved with anxiety. Studies have shown that you are more likely to develop anxiety if you have a close biological relationship to an already affected person. Anxiety deals with the nerve endings and the nerve receptors that have an opposite effect in the central nervous system, some say it can possibly be genetic. There are naturally occurring tranquilizers (inhibitory neurotransmitters) which dampen those nerves from firing. Then psychologically the mind reacts to spontaneous anxiety attacks by the use of avoidance. This is a battle between self-preservation and progressive disability.

Sheehan's book, “The Anxiety Disease” discusses the seven stages of anxiety; spells, panic, hypochondriasis, limited phobias, social phobias, extensive phobic avoidance, and then depression. These stages can occur over several years or even all in one short period of time. The more intense the anxiety the faster you travel through the different stages, if your body continues through them all.

Spells is the first stage where you begin all of the symptoms of anxiety. These short spells of symptoms occur suddenly, spontaneously and with out warning, and show to have no apparent reason. The body has an overall “loss ...