Anxiety is the uncomfortable sense that something is about to hurt you or someone you care about.
This sensation is common and might even be beneficial. It may make you more attentive and ready for action if you're starting a new job or taking an exam. However, worry can occasionally persist or become overwhelming. It's considered an anxiety disorder when it comes in the way of excellent health and peace of mind. You are not alone if you suffer from an anxiety problem. Long-term anxiety affects tens of millions of Americans of all ages each year. Anxiety disorders are the most frequent type of mental disease among children, and they can persist into adulthood.
“Everybody has anxiety,” says Dr. Daniel Pine, an NIH neuroscientist and psychiatrist. “The tricky part is how to tell the difference between normal and abnormal anxiety.”
Fears, concerns, and anxieties can create so much suffering in people with anxiety disorders that they interfere with their everyday lives. When there is no genuine risk, worry increases out of proportion to the stressful environment.
Anxiety triggers the stress reaction in the body. Almost all of your body's cells, tissues, and organs move into high-alert mode. Over time, this stress reaction can deplete your body. People who suffer from chronic (long-term) anxiety are more likely to develop physical and mental health issues. Some patients go to the doctor because they have headaches, a racing heart, or other physical problems without recognizing that these symptoms are linked to their level of anxiety.
Researchers supported by the National Institutes of Health are attempting to understand more about anxiety disorders. These disorders are caused by a mix of your genes and your environment, according to researchers. The exact circumstances that cause anxiety disorders, however, are yet unclear. Scientists are also looking for more effective techniques to identify, prevent, and cure these diseases.
Anxiety Types
The following are the most common types:
- Phobias: Intense, irrational fears triggered by things that pose little or no real danger, such as heights, dogs or spiders. Among the anxiety disorders, specific phobias are the most common.
- Social anxiety disorder: Leads to extreme anxiety and self-consciousness in everyday social situations. Also known as social phobia.
- Post-traumatic stress disorder: Caused by trauma. This condition leads to flashbacks, nightmares and insomnia. Often accompanied by depression or substance abuse, post-traumatic stress disorder can occur at any age, including childhood.
- Generalized anxiety disorder: Excessive worry about a variety of everyday problems.
- Panic disorder: Sudden attacks of terror accompanied by physical symptoms that may include heart palpitations, shortness of breath, dizziness, or abdominal distress. Panic disorder is one of the most treatable of anxiety disorders.
- Obsessive-compulsive disorder: Persistent, upsetting thoughts (obsessions) and repetitive rituals (compulsions), like hand washing, counting, checking or cleaning. These behaviors are done in the hope of preventing the thoughts or making them go away.
Anxiety disorders are often treated with a combination of medication and cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT). CBT (Cognitive Behavioral Therapy) is a type of talk therapy. It enables people to alter their fear-supporting thought processes as well as their responses to anxiety-provoking events. For the most part, current therapies are quite successful.
Dr. Denise Chavira, a psychologist from the University of California, San Diego, works with nervous young people in rural communities who are neglected. Her research team is looking for methods to make CBT more accessible to these kids, who may have difficulty getting to therapy sessions. The researchers are looking into telephone and self-help programs that focus on training parents how to apply CBT skills with their children to compensate for the loss of in-person interaction.
The researchers are comparing CBT training offered to parents over the phone against in-person CBT administered to anxious children and their parents in one trial. Parents and children construct lists of anxiety-inducing events with the aid of a therapist. Using CBT coping techniques, they progressively learn how to face their concerns. Both techniques urge parents to model bold conduct for their children and to allow them to grow to be self-sufficient. "Some parents are born with this ability, while others require some work," Chavira explains. "Because it just includes the parents and the sessions are shorter, the phone is a less intensive kind of treatment." "However, even that mode may be quite beneficial," explains Chavira.
Advanced imaging methods are also being used by NIH-funded researchers to target the parts of the brain that underpin anxiety disorders. This technique, which is still in its early stages, represents a significant departure from how doctors typically diagnose mental disease, which is based on symptoms and behaviors. Scientists are scanning the brain in activity, as it thinks, remembers, experiences emotion, and regulates the body's responses to situations that create worry, using a method called functional MRI (fMRI). fMRI scans provide full-color pictures of issue locations in real time by analyzing variations in blood flow related to brain activity.
Dr. Sonia Bishop of the University of California, Berkeley, utilizes functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to investigate patients who are at high risk for anxiety disorders. Her team intends to intervene early in the course of patients' anxiety problems to prevent them from spiraling out of control. The researchers are working on a novel sort of CBT-related treatment that will help patients retrain their emotional and attention regulation skills.
The amygdala and the hippocampus are two brain areas that scientists are particularly interested in. By alerting the brain to danger, the amygdala plays a crucial role in fear and anxiety. Threatening experiences are translated into memories by the hippocampus. Scientists may be able to design better medicines after they figure out if and how these locations contribute to sickness.
“These disorders put a huge burden on the individual, the family and society,” Bishop says. “Anxiety disorders are one of the most common reasons that people visit their primary health care provider.”
Your family doctor or nurse practitioner should be your first port of call if you're suffering from anxiety. He or she can look for any underlying medical sickness or condition that might be causing your symptoms. You can be sent to a mental health professional who can help you figure out what sort of anxiety condition you have and how to manage it. Most persons with anxiety disorders may live normal, meaningful lives with the right treatment.