Lotus Group can provide assistance with a variety of different counseling needs, anxiety disorders affect a large number of individuals in society. As we spoke in our earlier article about the different symptoms of an anxiety disorder related panic attack, we’ll now identify and expand on the various categories of anxiety disorders:
- Panic Disorder: Panic disorder can occur with agoraphobia or without agoraphobia. Panic disorder patients experience a panic attack and then for one month or more either 1) worry about having another panic attack, or 2) worry about the meaning or the consequences of the panic attack, or 3) significantly modify their behavior to avoid another panic attack.
- Agoraphobia without History of Panic Disorder: The basis for agoraphobia is a fear of not being able to escape or being embarrassed. You may have seen movies where characters fear leaving the safety of their homes, being in a crowd, or fear of flying. People with these types of fears usually avoid the situations or have extreme stress.
- Specific Phobia (formerly Simple Phobia): Specific phobia is the excessive, unreasonable fear of a specific object or situation (needles, heights, blood, flying, etc.). Contact with these objects or situations usually immediately provoke an anxious reaction, which may take the form of a panic attack. The person often realizes that the fear is unrealistic, but feels as if the fear is uncontrollable and avoids the object or situation. The anxiety gets in the way of the person’s day-to-day functioning and is present in those over 18 years old for at least 6 months.
- Social Phobia: This type of phobia is similar to what occurs with Specific Phobias. Social phobia involves anxiety surrounding social or performance situations where the person is under scrutiny or around unfamiliar people. The symptoms are the same as Specific Phobia; it is what causes the anxiety that is different. One of the most common forms of Social Phobia is public speaking.
- Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD): OCD involves obsessions (intrusive, ruminating thoughts, images, impulses) that cause anxiety and the repetitive, compulsive behaviors or mental acts the person must engage in order to relieve the anxiety. The thoughts and worries are not simply excessive worries about real-life problems. The person also feels driven to perform the behaviors and, at some point, realizes the obsessions and compulsions are excessive and/or unreasonable. The obsession/compulsion cycle is time-consuming and gets in the way of day-to-day functioning.
- Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD): PTSD occurs when someone has experienced a traumatic event in which he/she feels his/her life is being threatened or that he/she or someone near them would fall victim to serious injury (or even simply the threat of death or serious injury). These traumatic experiences provoke an intense fear or feeling of helplessness. After the event the person may have recurrent and intense flashbacks and/or dreams of the event, may actually feel or act as if the event is recurring, have extreme anxiety to things or situations that remind him/her of the event, and even have physical responses to those triggers in his/her environment. The person will often do whatever he/she can to avoid thoughts, feelings, conversations, activities, places or people that they fear may trigger flashbacks to the event. The person may also possess and show a detachment from others and significant activities, a restricted range of emotions, and a sense of his/her own mortality and a shortened future. They may also experience symptoms of heightened arousal such as, difficulty falling and/or staying asleep, difficulty concentrating, strong startle response, irritability and/or outbursts of anger, and hypervigilance. These symptoms are present for more than one month and interfere with everyday living.
- Acute Stress Disorder: This disorder also involves the person witnessing or experiencing a traumatic event that involved the fear or threat of physical injury or death for that person or someone else. In response to the experience, the person may experience a.) numbness or detachment; b.) feeling as if in a “daze;” c.) derealization; d.) depersonalization; or e.) the inability to recall an important aspect of the event. The person will also go through recurring images, flashbacks, or dreams or have some distress when being reminded of the event and usually try to avoid those triggers. The disturbance lasts for at least 2 days, but not more than four weeks, and occurs within 4 weeks of the event and causes the person quite a bit of distress socially or occupationally.
- Generalized Anxiety Disorder: Under this category, a person has excessive, difficult to control worry. The anxiety happens more often than not for at least 6 months. The person may also experience: feeling on edge (restless), being easily tired, having trouble concentrating, being irritable, having trouble sleeping, and muscle tension. The anxiety is not a social or specific phobia, PTSD, and is not related to physical complaints. As with all the other categories of anxiety disorders, the anxiety must cause a significant amount of distress.
Not everyone fits neatly into a diagnostic category. Even if you have only a few of the symptoms listed in a category, if your anxiety is troubling, checking in with a trained professional to get an idea of what might be going on is a good idea. Simply because you don’t fit a category doesn’t mean that what you’re experiencing isn’t a big deal. If it gets in the way of your day-to-day living, it’s worth checking it out. Contact a trained mental health professional if you or someone you love experiences some of the symptoms noted here.
In our final post in this series about anxiety, we’ll take a deeper look into the treatment options that are available for anxiety disorders and the methods that Lotus Group counselors could use for those treatments.
Majority of the information presented to this point has been taken from the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders—Fourth Edition (DSM-IV), (1994).