The silent pandemic [part 1/3]

Anxiety is the most common mental health disorder in the world. With more awareness about mental health issues, there has also been a lot of misunderstanding about serious mental disorders. This is the first of the five mental health series where I will be talking about the 5 most misunderstood disorders and try my level best to clear the air.

So, starting with anxiety. 4.7 % of the population suffers from anxiety and 9.8% of the population suffers from the combination of both anxiety and depression. And yet how is there so many misconception and vagueness in the air about this topic? Don’t worry, I will take you through slowly and try to clear out the fog.

The primary question that I ask anyone who asks me what anxiety is; “first tell do you think fear and anxiety is the same thing?”. Now probably you might have thought yes! But you are wrong.

How to distinguish fear vs anxiety?

“If fear is fearful of something particular and determinate, then anxiety is anxious about nothing in particular and is indeterminate. If fear is directed towards some distinct thing in the world, spiders, or whatever, then anxiety is anxious about being-in-the-world as such. Anxiety is experienced in the face of something completely indefinite. It is, Heidegger insists, ‘nothing and nowhere’” (Critchley, 2009).

Fear as stated above is a common physiological response towards a definite and a particular thing that arises fight or flight response in your body releasing surges of adrenaline or epinephrine which subsides once the perceived or actual threat has passed. in the other light, anxiety connotes to constant worry or apprehension the sources of which might be unclear and vague. The committee charged with reviewing the diagnostic criteria for the latest version of diagnostic and statistic manual of mental disorder [DSM] similarly distinguished anxiety as “a future-oriented mood state associated with preparation for possible, upcoming negative events” from fear which “is an alarm response to present or imminent danger (real or perceived)”; but in addition “Importantly, these descriptions represent prototypes of fear and anxiety that lie at different places upon a continuum of responding. Along such a continuum, symptoms of fear vs. Anxiety are likely to diverge and converge to varying degrees” (Craske et al., 2009).

If you are too much intimidated by the above lines, another writer has distinguished the same in a much less esoteric term; “the sudden re-arrangement of your guts when an intruder holds a knife to your back (fear), is different from mild nausea, dizziness, and butterflies in your stomach as you’re about to make a difficult phone call (anxiety).”

Anxiety and modernity (gets into the technicality, can skip this one)

That anxiety “somehow feels new” can be due to the fact that it has been the subject of extreme scientific research for less than half a century, but the concept of anxiety was conceived in the early twentieth century with the introduction of psychoanalytical theory by Freud and it escalated to the existential theory by majorly Abraham Maslow and Carl rogers but the topic of anxiety in existential theory was brought by German existentialist philosophical tradition of “angst” which means anxiety in the German language.

With the growing knowledge about mental health all over the world, there are some bizarre misinterpretation of the various psychological disorders which are just wrong from the core. Anxiety is now recognized as one of the most prevalent mental health issues in the world and yet there is enough evidence that it is the most undertreated, under-diagnosed, and under-reported. This might be because unlike many other mental health disorders, people with anxiety have not found words to articulate their range of feelings and emotions. For example, some people living with anxiety describe feelings of shame and embarrassment at their physical symptoms, such as excessive perspiration, which lead them to adopt, what Freudian psychoanalysts would recognize as classical defense mechanisms: “they learn to seal their anxiety off from public view”. According to Daniel Smith, “they learn to cork their anxiety within themselves like acid in a vial. It isn’t pleasant. The human mind isn’t Pyrex, it can corrode. But it works.”

The author of “my age anxiety” has described that anxiety can be plotted in a bell shaped curve, the people on the right have too much anxiety that it is an obstacle to complete their work and the people on the left have too little anxiety which is also an obstacle. The sweet spot is the middle part where your anxiety is the driving force for you to do your work.

What are the different types of anxiety?

Anxiety comprises a range of other mental health disorders which are :

How can you identify whether or not you have anxiety?

The symptoms of anxiety can vary from butterflies in stomach to a racing heart, and is different for everyone. Now anyone can have these symptoms, but when it prevails for more than 4 weeks and it interferes with your everyday life, then it is called an anxiety disorder.

The common symptoms of general anxiety are:

• ·       Increased heart rate
• ·       Rapid breathing
• ·       Difficulty in concentration
• ·       Sleeplessness
• ·       Restlessness
• ·       Fear of future

Now it is recommended to talk to a professional psychologist or psychiatrist if your feel like you have the above-mentioned symptoms prevailing for more than 3 weeks.

You can find out if your friend or a family member has anxiety by looking out for the above-written symptoms, in addition to that you may also check their sleeping and eating patterns.

Is there a test that diagnoses anxiety?

A single test cannot diagnose anxiety. Anxiety diagnosis is a lengthy process of physical examination, mental health evaluation, and psychological questionnaire.

Some doctors take urine and blood test to check out the underlying medical condition that can contribute to the presenting symptom.

What are the treatments for anxiety?

The Treatment of anxiety can be put under three categories, lifestyle, medications, and psychotherapy.

Meeting with a psychologist can help you identify and adopt various techniques to cope with anxiety and panic attacks.

Medications are pills that are usually antidepressants and sedatives. They work on balancing the brain chemistry and warding off the most severe symptoms of the disorder. Usually have neurological side effects in the person taking such pills for a long time.

And then the last is lifestyle changes that one can use such as meditating, exercising, consuming less caffeine eating healthy, and avoiding alcohol.

How can you help someone with anxiety?

If you know someone who has anxiety, you must learn to give them space and also be there for them at the same time. It might get difficult but remember it is nothing as compared to what they are going through. Make sure that they are not resorting to unhealthy habits like drinking alcohol, smoking, or consuming other drugs. Be a good listener to their worries, they don’t want any solutions, they just want to be heard and feel like there is someone that they can trust. Console them with words like “this too shall pass” and be positive.

Refrence:

• Healthline.com 
• American psychology association
• mentalhealth.org.nz
• DSM-5 
• My age of anxiety
• illustration by  Chelsea Charles and red bubble