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Anxiety disorders
Background
Anxiety can be generalised often with no obvious trigger (free floating) or focused in response to a specific cause (phobic).
A phobia is an intense aversion that is focused on a specific object or situation. It is associated with fear of the particular stimulus, expressed as an ‘anxiety state’ in particular circumstances with a specific focus when extreme. In extreme instances, it is experienced by the affected individual as a panic attack.
The ‘panic’ attack is actually a combination of psychological and physiological responses to danger. The body prepares to ‘fight or flight’. To achieve this, the blood supply is diverted from one part of the body to another, the heart rate and breathing rate increase and sweating occurs. These effects produce the conscious experiences of panic and impending threat. Panic attacks are self-limiting, although phobic individuals may feel them to be life-threatening and may even believe they are experiencing a fatal event.
The focus of the attack in phobic conditions is directed to a real object or situation that becomes associated with the individual’s particular fears. A phobia may reach proportions that result in the individual’s freedom of action being severely curtailed. In such circumstances, family members are also affected.
Common phobias include agoraphobia (fear of open space) and claustrophobia (fear of enclosed space), snake phobia and spider phobia.
Obsessive compulsive disorder is a situation where the individual has to perform specific actions (‘compulsions’) such as washing or specific repeated thoughts (‘obsessions’), which may show as counting rituals. These activities in very severe cases may reach such proportions that an individual’s entire life, and the life of their family, is affected by them.
Separation anxiety disorder is a specific condition where the child’s anxiety over real or anticipated separation from carers is of extreme and debilitating severity, often associated with problems with everyday functioning.
Hypochondriasis occurs when anxiety takes the form of overwhelming, debilitating and persisting worries about physical ailments in the absence of genuine physical illness. This may be so extreme that the individual experiences genuine distressing symptoms – ‘somatisation disorder’.
