Anxiety is a common and natural emotion but can also cause physical symptoms, such as shaki but eating. Anxiety disorders can affect daily life but can often improve with treatment. Anxiety disorders form a category of mental health diagnoses that lead to excessive nervousness, fear, apprehension, and worry.
What is anxiety?
According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA), around 40 million people in the United States have an anxiety disorder. It is the most common group of mental illnesses in the country. However, only 36.9% of people with an anxiety disorder receive treatment.
The American Psychological Association (APA) defines anxiety as “an emotion characterized by feelings of tension, worried thoughts, and physical changes like increased blood pressure.”
Knowing the difference between typical feelings of anxiety and an anxiety disorder requiring medical attention can help a person identify and treat the condition.
Anxiety and anxiety disorders
Anxiety is a complex response to real or perceived threats. It can involve cognitive, physical, and behavioral changes. Real or perceived danger causes a rush of adrenaline, a hormone, and chemical messenger in the brain, which in turn triggers these anxiety reactions in a process called the fight-or-flight response. Some people may experience this response in difficult social situations or around important events or decisions. The duration or severity of feelings of anxiety can sometimes be out of proportion to the original trigger or stressor. Physical symptoms, such as increased blood pressure and nausea, may also develop. These responses move beyond anxiety into an anxiety disorder.
Once anxiety reaches the stage of a disorder, it can interfere with daily function.
Symptoms
There are several different anxiety disorders, which can present with different symptoms. Typical symptoms of anxious feelings include the following:
- restlessness
- uncontrollable feelings of worry
- increased irritability
- difficulty concentrating
- sleep difficulties
While many people will occasionally experience these symptoms in daily life, people with a general anxiety disorder (GAD) will experience them at pa persistent or extreme levels.
Types
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Health Disorders: 5th Edition, text revision (DSM-5-TR) classifies anxiety disorders into several main types. In previous editions of the DSM-5-TR, anxiety disorders included obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), as well as an acute stress disorder. However, the manual no longer groups these mental health difficulties under anxiety. Anxiety disorders now include the following:
GAD
This chronic disorder involves excessive, long-lasting anxiety and worries about nonspecific life events, objects, and situations. GAD is the most common anxiety disorder, and people with it are not always able to identify the cause of their anxiety.
Panic disorder
Brief or sudden attacks of intense terror and apprehension characterize the panic disorder. These attacks can lead to shaking, confusion, dizziness, nausea, and breathing difficulties. Panic attacks tend to occur and escalate rapidly. Panic disorders usually occur after frightening experiences or prolonged stress but may also occur without a trigger.
Specific phobia
This is a fear and avoidance of a particular object or situation. Phobias are not like other anxiety disorders, as they relate to a specific cause. A person with a phobia might acknowledge fear as illogical or extreme but remain unable to control feelings of anxiety around the trigger. Triggers for a phobia range from situations and animals to everyday objects.
Agoraphobia
This is a fear and avoidance of places, events, or situations from which it may be difficult to escape or where help would not be available in emergencies. People often misunderstand this condition as a phobia of open spaces and the outdoors. A person with agoraphobia may fear leaving home or using elevators and public transport.
Selective mutism
Some children experience this form of anxiety, in which they cannot speak in certain places or contexts, even though they may have excellent verbal communication skills around familiar people.
Social anxiety disorder
This is a fear of adverse judgment from others in social situations or of public embarrassment. Social anxiety disorder includes a range of feelings, such as stage fright, a fear of intimacy, and anxiety around humiliation and rejection.
Separation anxiety disorder
High anxiety levels after separation from a person or place that provides feelings of security or safety characterize separation anxiety disorder. Separation anxiety is most common in young children but can affect people of all ages.
Causes
The causes of anxiety disorders are complicated. Many might occur at once, some may lead to others, and some might not lead to an anxiety disorder unless another is present.
Possible causes include:
- environmental stressors, such as relationship problems or family issues
- genetics
- medical factors, such as disease symptoms or the effects of a medication
- substance withdrawal
Treatment
Treatment often consists of psychotherapy, behavioral therapy, and medication. Sometimes, alcohol dependence, depression, or other underlying conditions require treatment before treating an anxiety disorder can take place.
Self-treatment
Sometimes, a person can treat an anxiety disorder at home without clinical supervision. However, this may not be effective for severe or long-term anxiety disorders. There are several exercises and actions to help a person cope with milder, more focused, or shorter-term anxiety disorders, including:
- stress management
- relaxation techniques
- maintaining support networks
- physical exercise
Counseling
A standard way of treating anxiety is psychological counseling. This can include cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), psychotherapy, or a combination of therapies.
CBT is a type of psychotherapy that aims to recognize and change harmful thought patterns that form the foundation of anxious and troublesome feelings.
Medications
A person can support anxiety management with several types of medication. Medicines that might control some physical and mental symptoms include antidepressants, benzodiazepines, and tricyclic antidepressants.
- Benzodiazepines: A doctor may prescribe these for certain people with anxiety, but they can cause addiction. Diazepam, or Valium, is a common benzodiazepine.
- Antidepressants commonly help with anxiety, even though they also target depression. Serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs), fluoxetine, and citalopram are examples.
- Tricyclic antidepressants: These are an older class of drugs that benefit most anxiety disorders other than obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Imipramine and clomipramine are two examples of tricyclics.
Additional drugs a person might use to treat anxiety include:
Seek medical advice if the adverse effects of any prescribed medications become severe.
Prevention
There are ways to reduce the risk of anxiety disorders. Remember that anxious feelings are a natural factor of daily life, and experiencing them does not always indicate the presence of a mental health disorder.
People may benefit from the following:
- reducing caffeine intake
- checking with a health professional before using over-the-counter or herbal remedies
- maintaining a balanced, nutritious diet
- keeping a regular sleep pattern
- regularly exercising
- avoiding alcohol, cannabis, and other recreational drugs
How can Insurance Help Reduce Anxiety?
Events beyond our country could overtake us and when we are not prepared to manage these events it tends to affect our life negatively. Anxiety is caused by things external and independent of the body. By this, anxiety is not a product of medical problems or internal issues but is caused by the things happening in our environment.
Insurance is known to be a provision made to carter for times of danger and crisis in a person’s life business or property. Insurance helps to cushion the effect a supposed danger or problem would have had on an individual’s life. When a person is insured by the insurer it gives a kind of relaxation as you are now living with the knowledge of being indemnified should calamity befall you. Empirically, this has reduced anxiety. When there is nothing much to worry about like how to take care of family health and business problem, humans tend to be relaxed and not anxious but when there is no provision for rainy days in whatever aspect of a person’s when it rains anxiety sets in. In practice, insurance is a good tip for the reduction of anxiety. This peace of mind effect comes with knowing that you are not at risk of anything or that even if there is a possibility of risk that there is provision to cushion its effect on you. You are released always having this knowledge that you are insured and your business and property are also insured from risk. This is how insurance reduces one’s anxiety. It is therefore advisable that we should make sure that we get the necessary insurance coverage that would be beneficial to us.
Takeaway
Anxiety is not a medical condition but a natural emotion that is vital for survival when an individual faces danger. An anxiety disorder develops when this reaction becomes exaggerated or out-of-proportion to the trigger that causes it. Several types of anxiety disorders include panic disorder, phobias, and social anxiety. Treatment involves a combination of therapy, medication, and counseling alongside self-help measures. An active lifestyle with a balanced diet can help keep anxious emotions within healthy limits.
