Anxiety Disorders Paper

Unfortunately, humans have the incredible capability of being ill without actually appearing to be sick. This is exactly what an anxiety disorder looks like. Victims silently suffer within their own mind, and no one can visualize their mental exhaustion or pain. Anxiety disorders silently lurk in many ordinary people and can often go completely unnoticed. Although anxiety disorders cannot be cured, they can be monitored, addressed, treated and researched. Anxiety disorders are disruptive feelings of fear, apprehension, or anxiety, or they can also be explained as distortions in behavior that are anxiety related (Coon, Mitterer, 2013, p.480). Some anxiety disorders involve feelings of panic while others show as phobias or overwhelming
Some of these types include: generalized anxiety disorder, panic disorder, agoraphobia, specific phobia, and social phobia. There are specific symptoms for each type, but a few general symptoms of anxiety are feelings of panic and uneasiness, sleeping problems, sweating or cold hands and feet, difficulty controlling worry, and tingling in hands or feet. Anxiety could also be to blame for shortness of breath, dizziness, nausea, dry mouth, irritability and muscle tension (WebMD.com, 2017). Generalized anxiety disorder results in a person feeling constant dread and doom. Agoraphobia is a fear of being in a place or situation where escape is almost impossible or difficult while specific phobias contain a fear for certain objects or situations and events. If someone suffers from social anxiety, they may experience anxiousness about being around other people, self-consciousness, fear of judgment, worry about an upcoming event, blushing, and trembling (nimh.nih.gov, 2017). The symptoms of a panic disorder are sudden and repeated attacks of intense fear, intense worries about when the next attack will occur, and fear or avoidance of places were attacks have happened. Obsessive compulsive disorder is also associated with high anxiety as well as acute stress disorder and posttraumatic stress disorder (Coon, Mitterer, 2013, p. 480). Each type of anxiety disorder is slightly different, but they all contain
About sixty percent of patients have a relative with the same disorder (Cader, Uhde, 2006, p.24). This leads many scientists and physicians to believe that mental illness is, in fact, hereditary. As scientist further their research, it is apparent that many of these disorders are caused by a combination of risk factors (WebMD.com, 2017). Risk factors could be shyness during childhood, having few economic resources, exposure to stressful events, parental history of mental illness, divorced, widowed, elevated afternoon cortisol levels in saliva, or simply being female (nimh.nih.gov, 2017). Anxiety disorders are surprisingly known to be found more in women than in men with a two to one ratio of female patients to male patients (Cader, Uhde, 2006, p.32). It is also believed that severe trauma can trigger an anxiety disorder. Studies have shown that long lasting episodes of stress or devastation can change the way nerves cells transmit information causing people with anxiety disorders to have a change in brain structure and control of memories that are linked with emotional memories (WebMD.com, 2017). Research is still being performed to narrow down the exact causes of anxiety disorders, but doctors are able to diagnose and treat these diseases to give patients some sort of