Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety Disorders

We are going to talk about 5 different types of anxiety disorders.  All 5 share the common bond of causing anxiety.

Anxiety is basically a combination of fear, apprehension and worry (its a really crappy feeling).  It causes physical symptoms as well, like butterflies in the stomach, headaches or diarrhea.

Now let’s go through the five I want you to know: phobias, generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder.

1. Phobia is an intense, irrational fear.  The key here is irrational.  If a man sticks a gun in your face- you will be afraid of the gun- that is a rational fear.  But if you are hanging out in the library and are fear that every person will stick a gun in your face, that is not as rational.

If you live in parts of India and fear tigers that is rational.  But if you are walking in New York with a chocolate bonnet from Carvel (those bonnets are the bomb- how do they get the ice cream to stay on the cone when they dip it in chocolate syrup will always remain a mystery) and stop at every corner looking for tigers- that is irrational.

A fear of toilet paper is another example…..

The most common phobias are arachnophobia (fear of spiders) and agoraphobia (see below).  But there exist phobias for just about anything you can think of- check out this phobia list.

2. Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is characterized by a constant, low level anxiety.  The person constantly feels nervous and out of sorts all the time and often cannot specify why.

3. Panic Disorder is characterized by sudden and acute episodes on intense anxiety without any apparent provocation.  People that suffer from panic disorder tend to get nervous about experiencing panic attacks in public which causes more panic attacks and secondary disorders such as agoraphobia (fear or going out in open/public spaces).

4. Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, know n as OCD, is when persistent, unwanted thoughts that you cannot get out of your head (obsessions) cause someone to feel the need (compulsions) to engage in a particular action.  There is usually a linkage between the obsession and compulsion.  For example, is someone has an obsession with germs, a common compulsion would be washing of the hands.  Obsessions result in the anxiety, and this anxiety is reduced when the person performs the compulsive behavior.

5. Post-traumatic stress disorder is when memories of a traumatic event (war, natural disaster, personal attack) cause intense feelings of anxiety even up to the point where persistent nightmares or flashbacks can dominate one’s life.  The Vietnam War unfortunately provided thousands of examples of PTSD.  Health care workers are just starting to see the severe psychological effects the current conflict in the middle east is having on our soldiers.

Ok- that’s a brief description of the anxiety disorders you must know for the AP.  We will talk about the possible causes and therapies for each disorder when we talk about the various psychological perspectives in the following chapters.