Anxiety Disorder Treatment, Types, Causes, & Symptoms

What is Anxiety Disorder?

Anxiety disorder refers to specific psychiatric disorders that involve extreme fear or worry and uneasiness. It might cause you to sweat, feel restless and tense, and have a rapid heartbeat. It is a real and serious medical condition. Anxiety Disorder Treatment may include medication and psychotherapy. 

Most anxious people are born with a genetic vulnerability to develop an anxiety disorder. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) recognizes it as the most common of mental disorders. It affects nearly 30 percent of adults at some point in their lives.

Anxiety can lead to a mental health problem if it impacts your ability to live your life as fully as you want to. It may be a problem if:

• Your fears or worries are out of proportion to the situation
• You avoid situations that might cause you to feel anxious
• Your worries feel very distressing or are hard to control
• You regularly experience panic attacks
• You find it hard to go about your everyday life or do things you enjoy

It is time to seek some anxiety disorder treatment, a co-occurring program, as it is very common to see someone struggling with anxiety involved in alcohol or drug abuse at the same time.

Types of Anxiety Disorders

Generalized Anxiety Disorder

People with Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) display excessive anxiety or worry. It lasts most days for at least 6 months. Fear and anxiety can cause significant problems in areas of their life, such as social interactions, school, and work.

Generalized anxiety disorder can dominate your life, and often lasts a long time. But there are a number of different treatments for generalized anxiety disorder that can help you learn to better manage your anxiety and lead a normal life again. Psychological treatment for generalized anxiety disorder includes Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).

What is the best treatment plan for generalized anxiety disorder? CBT is one of the most effective treatments for GAD. There are several ways you may be offered self-help and CBT: you work through a CBT workbook or computer course in your own time. you work through a CBT workbook or computer course with the support of a therapist who you see every 1 or 2 weeks.

Treatment for General Anxiety Disorder

Cognitive behavioral therapy as part of the treatment of generalized anxiety disorder has benefits that go beyond just helping to reduce anxiety. It can also help with the symptoms of depression, for example, which may accompany generalized anxiety disorder. General anxiety disorder treatments that employ CBT involve directly confronting your fears. The goal of the cognitive approach is to change thought patterns that trigger anxiety.

Panic Disorder

People with panic disorder have recurrent unexpected panic attacks. Furthermore, these panic attacks are sudden periods of intense fear that reach their peak within minutes. Attacks can happen unexpectedly and can be triggered by a feared object or situation.

Phobia-related disorders

A phobia is an intense fear of specific objects or situations. Although it can be realistic to be anxious in some circumstances, the fear people with phobias feel is out of proportion.

Social Anxiety Disorder

A person with a social anxiety disorder has anxiety and discomfort about being embarrassed, humiliated, and looked down on in social interactions. People with this disorder will try to avoid the situation or endure it with great anxiety. For instance, extreme fear of public speaking, meeting new people, or eating/drinking in public.

Social anxiety disorder treatments depend on how much social anxiety disorder affects your ability to function in daily life. The most common treatment for social anxiety disorder includes psychotherapy (also called psychological counseling or talk therapy) or medications or both.

Separation Anxiety Disorder

A person with a separation anxiety disorder is excessively fearful or anxious about separation from those with whom he or she is attached. The feeling is beyond what is appropriate for the person’s age, therefore causing problems in functioning. A person with a separation anxiety disorder may be persistently worried about losing the person closest to him or her.

Separation Anxiety Disorder Treatments

Separation anxiety disorder treatment usually involves psychotherapy, sometimes along with medication. Psychotherapy, sometimes called talk therapy or psychological counseling, involves working with a therapist to reduce separation anxiety symptoms.

Anxiety disorders treatment particularly separation anxiety disorder treatment may include CBT. Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) is an effective form of psychotherapy for separation anxiety disorder. During therapy for treatment for separation anxiety disorder, the patient can learn how to face and manage fears about separation and uncertainty.

Illness Anxiety Disorder

Illness anxiety disorder (previously called hypochondriasis) is a psychiatric disorder defined by excessive worry about having or developing a serious undiagnosed medical condition. People with illness anxiety disorder experience persistent anxiety or fear of developing or having a serious medical illness despite normal physical examination and laboratory testing results. People suffering from illness anxiety disorder pay excessive attention to normal bodily sensations (such as functions of digestion or sweating) and misinterpret these sensations as indicators of severe disease. Illness anxiety disorder is typically a chronic condition.

Illness Anxiety Disorder Treatment

Treatment for illness anxiety disorder is focused on helping patients cope with their health anxieties. Primary care providers should aim to establish a rapport and therapeutic alliance with their patients so that patients feel comfortable in discussing their health concerns. Psychotherapy is the first-line treatment for illness anxiety disorder. Cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT) is a type of psychotherapy that focuses on treating the patient’s dysfunctional maladaptive cognitive beliefs by behavioral modification strategies.

Learn More:

• Rehab for Depression & Anxiety Treatment
• What is the Best SSRI for Anxiety?
• Social Anxiety Disorder
• Grounding Techniques for Anxiety Attacks
• Mental Health Poems that are Powerful and Healing
• Short-Term Disability Mental Health
• Do Crystals For Depression Work?
• Depression and ADHD: What’s the Link?
• Autism and Depression Connection, Diagnosis & Treatment
• Signs of Depression in Men, Causes, & What to Know

6.8 million

GAD affects 6.8 million adults or 3.1% of the U.S. population, yet only 43.2% are receiving treatments for anxiety disorders.

Source: National Institute on Mental Health

17.3 million

Major depressive disorder affects approximately 17.3 million American adults or about 7.1% of the U.S. population aged 18 and older.

Source: National Institute of Mental Health

Some causes of anxiety disorders are: 

• Genetics. Anxiety disorders can run in families. However, research shows it is inconclusive.
• Brain chemistry. Research suggests anxiety disorders are linked to faulty circuits in the brain that controls fear and emotions. In effect, it leads to panic disorder.
• Environmental stress. This refers to stressful events you have seen or lived through. Moreover, it could lead to sleep problems.
• Drug withdrawal or misuse. Certain drugs may be used to hide or decrease certain anxiety symptoms. Anxiety disorder often goes hand in hand with alcohol and substance use. For instance, cocaine and alcohol.
• Medical conditions. Some heart, lung, and thyroid conditions can cause symptoms similar to anxiety disorders or make anxiety symptoms worse. Likewise, this leads to an inability to concentrate and uneasiness.

• Panic, fear, and uneasiness
• Feelings of panic, doom, or danger
• Sleep problems
• Cold, sweaty, numb, or tingling hands
• Shortness of breath
• Heart palpitations
• Dry mouth
• Nausea
• Tense muscles
• Dizziness
• Thinking about a problem over and over again and unable to stop (rumination)
• Inability to concentrate
• Intensely or obsessively avoiding feared objects or places

Anxiety Disorder Treatment

Intense inpatient anxiety disorder treatment can offer invaluable help in handling anxiety’s produced vicious cycle of emotional distress. Anxiety can be difficult to treat. However, with proper specialist therapies, the individual should be able to get down to the root of their problem.

Anxiety disorder treatment can work best with a combination of therapy and anti-anxiety medications. That is according to [3] Anxiety and Depression Association of America. Similarly, co-occurring integrated mental health therapy is one of the most effective therapeutic methods for complex anxiety disorders with two or more secondary conditions. Research has strongly indicated that to recover fully, a person with anxiety disorder needs treatment for all underlying corresponding problems. If an anxiety disorder is treated and its secondary-related disorder is left out, then it will add more problems than solutions.

Anxiety Disorder Medication

Background information for this anxiety disorder treatment with medication is that there are several types of generalized anxiety disorder treatments. Benzodiazepines, serotonin reuptake inhibitors, serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors, and buspirone have all been shown to be effective in clinical trials. These drugs appear to work best when taken regularly over the course of a number of months. Anxiety disorder medication is different than antidepressants, which are used more to treat conditions like major depression.