anxiety disorders

Introduction

There are a number of known anxiety disorders. These disorders are most prevalent of all mental disorders. Cultural factors, ethnic and racial factors strongly affect these disorders by part.

Historical

Anxiety disorder is recognized today as the most common class of mental health disorders as well as the most treatable. Therefore it is far much easier for us to forget the agenda of the phobia meeting which was held in 1978 in the New York City at the White Plains. Initially, anxiety disorder had not been identified by the scientists. Majority of these anxieties were termed as phobias. There were phobia meetings which were organized in which patients together with the clinicians attended to promote national awareness and treatment of phobias. the new treatments known as exposure therapies are working.

The Phobia Society of America was founded in 1980 by a small research group. The founders were able to imagine what influence unscrambling the mysteries of anxiety would have in terms of investigative follow up and future action alternatives. The ability of the communication technologies to provide information to the clinicians and patients was a dawn. Such information could be accessed instantly at any point and time around the globe. Several changes took place as the researchers identified channels amid abnormal flow of the blood in the brain and the panic attacks.

It was learned the anxiety disorders are coupled with health and pervasive social outcomes. This led to the discovery of various tested therapies as well as medications meant for the treatment of anxiety. Anxiety Disorders Association of America became one of the first mental health corporations and was able to advocate, provide clinical information education and disseminated the science behind the anxiety disorder. Its name was changed again to Anxiety and Depression Association of America in the year 2012. The nature of the patients is clearly reflected by this name and also reflects and acknowledges the realities clinical practices.

1. Cause of the Illness

Anxiety disorder has a wide range of causative agents that have been identified and scientifically proven. The causes are listed below:

• Abuse of alcohol and other drugs – Excessive intake of alcoholic beverages and abuse of drugs result in anxiety disorder. Due to hallucination, a victim of drug abuse feels isolated and hence anxiety.
• Lack of meaning and purpose in someone’s life – Some people don’t get to understand the real meaning of life. According to them, life is full of distress and frustrations. These feelings combined together will develop the disorder of anxiety.
• The way one perceives herself or himself in their thoughts – individuals may feel low self-esteem due to the life situations. The situations are normally lack of food, money or even favor thereby making an individual feel underrated.
• Your beliefs and attitude about yourself God and the world – Different people have different perspectives about, the world God and themselves. Some people think that God does not exist due to their life challenges and frustrations. They have a feeling that the world is not fair to them and as a result, anxiety develops.
• Genetic makeup – this is based on imbalances of chemicals in someone’s brain. These chemicals are contained in a genetic heredity material known as DNA. When the parent develops anxiety characteristics, these characteristics are then passed on from the parent to the offspring’s at birth.
• Cumulative stress – stress may accumulate due to reasons to do with regular accidents in a family, weddings, births, next moves or even financial constrains.
• Early life trauma of abuse, neglect or separation – in other instances, some children may be neglected or separated by their families. This arouses the feeling of anxiety when they experience challenges in life. These challenges may include struggle to meet their needs and get food.
• Family background – this normally occurs in families that are perfectionist.

Treatment

Treatment of anxiety disorder is tied to specific patient. These treatments may be in one or more of the following forms:

1. Psychopharmacology
2. Individual Psychotherapy
3. Group therapy
4. Systematic Desensitization hypnosis
5. Imagery
6. Relaxation Exercises
7. Biofeedback

The most effective treatment method of anxiety treatment is psychotherapy and drug treatment. However, there is rare complete systematic relief. The anti-anxiety drugs such as Benzodiazepine can relieve anxiety. However, these drugs should only be prescribed for a period not exceeding six weeks to avoid possible abuse (Kessler RC, 2012). Buspirone results in less sedation and less danger of psychological and physical dependence as compared to benzodiazepine. However, several weeks are taken for its effectiveness. Through psychotherapy, a patient is able to recognize and deal with the possible causes of anxiety, expect their reactions and prepare for operative reply measures to carp anxiety. Relaxation techniques such as progressive muscle relaxation, visualization, focused relaxation, and deep breathing may be learned by the patient. The importance of this therapy is that anxiety is dealt with completely and that; there are no possible cases of side effects associated with it.

Prevention

Anxiety is the state of experiencing a powerful   feeling of fear of real or imagined threat affecting psychological, physical or emotional experiences. One way of preventing anxiety disorder is by relaxing your body. When the body is relaxed stress hormones are used up and expelled out of the body faster therefore it brings an end to the feelings of active stress response. A relaxed body does away with muscle tension which is caused by stress response.

Secondly, keeping yourself  busy .This helps to avoid anxious  thinking  which is a state of believing that something bad is about to happen. One keep himself or herself busy by practices such as calling a friend, reading a story book, playing a game or watching a video. Anything which distracts our mind from the sensation of active stress response assists in ending anxiety disorder.

You need to stop scaring yourself. Fear is the most common cause of anxiety attack therefore; controlling yourself through positive thinking will conquer the fear hence preventing the disorder. When you do away with fear then you prevent the most common causes of anxiety.

Another natural way of preventing anxiety disorder is by taking a deep breath. As you take a deep breath your body will calm down which ends the anxiety attack.

Calming you down is another measure of prevention.  When you calm yourself down, the stress response in the body ends. This happens when the body uses up stress hormones and expels the remaining ones.

Another way of preventing anxiety disorder is by understanding what anxiety attacks are, their causes and how to respond to them. This stops the fear of being attacked by these disorders.

Having a positive attitude towards any anxiety disorder is the best way of controlling the anxiety disorder. This comes about when one realizes that no matter how strong the disorder is, it will come into an end. This makes one to remain calm which also stops the stress response.

Cross Cultural

It is difficult to establish a direct comparison in prevalence amid varied cultures due to language differences, instruments of assessment sociodemographic, geographical and political context. A comparison between cultural groups within the similar multicultural state would lead to derivation of a more significant approximation of the disparity in prevalence rates. Taking the United as States population for example, oversampling of Hispanic Americans are three thousand six hundred and fifteen, Asian Americans are one thousand six hundred and twenty-eight, African Americans are four thousand five hundred and ninety-eight. From the above results, it is clear that the four major anxiety disorders are symptoms are consistently endorsed by Asian Americans. Symptoms of social anxiety disorder are consistently endorsed by the white Americans. African Americans met criteria for post-traumatic stress disorder frequently as opposed to the subgroup of Asian Americans and Hispanic Americans.

1. Biblical Worldview

Discuss the topic from a Christian worldview perspective, including disorder’s cause, treatment, and prevention. Utilize the Bible and a book or journal source written from a biblical/theological perspective on the topic (1 page).

Conclusion

Anxiety disorder has become the world’s most common disorder. Several people have suffered it in one way or another without knowing its cause. In these pare, the characteristics of this disorder are discussed and the viable methods of treatment.

References

1. Kessler RC, Petukhova M, Sampson NA, Zaslavsky AM, Wittchen HU. Twelve month and lifetime prevalence and livetime morbid risk of anxiety and mood disorders in the United States. Int J Methods Psychiatr Res. 2012;21:169–174. [PMC free article][PubMed]
2. Hinton DE. Multicultural challenges in the delivery of anxiety treatment. Depress Anxiety. 2012;29:1–3.[PubMed] Reviews how the culturally specific experiencing of distress, particulary anxiety-type distress, must be understood in order to design effective treatments for diverse populations.
3. Hofmann SG, Asnaani A, Hinton DE. Cultural aspects in social anxiety and social anxiety disorder. Depress Anxiety. 2010;27:1117–1127. [PubMed]Reviews the factors that contribute to the differences in social anxiety different cultures, including individualism/collectivism, perception of social norms, self-construal, gender roles, and gender role identification.
4. Asnaani A, Richey JA, Dimaite R, Hinton DE, Hofmann SG. A cross-ethnic comparison of lifetime prevalence rates of anxiety disorders. Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease. 2010;198:551–555. [PubMed] Reports the results of a large epidemiological study comparing White Americans, African Americans, Hispanic Americans, and Asian Americans in the prevalence rates of anxiety disorders.
5. Chou T, Asnaani A, Hofmann SG. Perception of racial discrimination and psychopathology across three US ethnic minority groups. Cult Div Ethnic Min Psychol. 2012;18:74–81.[PMC free article] [PubMed]