Published studies show “25 percent of all U.S. adults have a mental illness and that nearly 50 percent of U.S. adults will develop at least one mental illness during their lifetime” (“Data on behavioral health in the United States”). The two most common mental illnesses are Anxiety and Depression. Although there are differences between the two, they also have many similarities. There is a fine line between the two, a line that is often blurred. Anxiety and Depression disorders are similar in the symptoms they present, the medications prescribed, and the treatment and therapy provided.
Approximately “40 million American adults ages 18 and older, or about 18.1 percent of people in this age group in a given year, have an anxiety disorder”(NIMH). Anxiety is associated with fear and apprehension. Anxiety creates a feeling of discomfort, restlessness, nervousness, and leaves one feeling worried. Those with Anxiety tend to think negatively and fear that something will go wrong and make life worse. Physically Anxiety can cause a rapid heartbeat, sweating, shaking and even hyper ventilating. Since Anxiety can cause apprehension and worrying thoughts of the medicine used to treat Anxiety can be doubtful, some of the medication prescribed include; Diazepam, Valium, Xanax, and Zoloft. The prescription can alter depending on multiple factors like the type of severity of disorder, the patient’s response to the medication, and harmful side effects. Medicine alone will not have an
Anxiety disorders are the most common psychiatric disorder in the United States. Between 15 - 19% of the population suffers from this disorder, which impairs the quality of life and functioning (Stuart 218). What is anxiety? Abnormal Psychology describes anxiety as “an adaptive emotion that helps us plan and prepare for a possible theat.” The text book further states, “worrying about many different aspects of life becomes chronic, excessive, and unreasonable.” This is also known as generalized anxiety disorder or GAD (Butcher 201). DSM IV-TR specifies that GAD is a worry that occurs more days then not for at least 6 months, and that it must be experienced as difficult to control (Butcher 201). 25% of those that suffer from this
Adolescence is a difficult time period in a young person’s transition into their later stage of both physical and mental development. Mood disorders are often overlooked during this time for the brain becoming more developed; however among children, anxiety disorders seem to be the most common disorders to be experienced (Nelson; Israel, pg 112). Barlow (2002) defines anxiety as a future-oriented emotion that is characterized by the inability to be in control and predict future events that can be potentially dangerous to the individual. Anxiety shares commonalities with fear, but the difference between the two being that fear is the initial response made from a present threat, where anxiety is due to a unknown future event. A common
Anxiety is a disorder characterized by fear, doubt, and a sense of vulnerability. People with anxiety tend to have less noticeable symptoms than people with depression, as symptoms of anxiety are things such as physical sensations of strong emotions of fear. Depression symptoms are more physical and noticeable from the outside, such as lack of eating or sleep, or lack of interest in doing things. People with depression may become
Antidepressants are used when the symptoms of a sufferer of anxiety or depression are persistent and severe. Anxiety is the general term used to describe an array of disorders that cause intense fear, apprehension, and distress (Cassiday, 2016). A depressive disorder is a disorder that causes persistent sadness and loss of hope and interest in life (Malhi et al., 2015). As antidepressants tend to have side effects whereas many other treatments do not, a sufferer of anxiety will commonly be initially treated with cognitive-behavioural therapy or other forms of talking therapy, meditation, exercise, and healthy eating if these treatments are not effective a patient will be considered to be prescribed medication (Cassiday, 2016). However patients that are prescribed antidepressants additionally are typically treated with other therapies, as the combination of different remedies is almost always far more effective than only one (Sethi, 2012).
Everyday someone is fighting a battle with an anxiety disorder. Anxiety is considered a mental illness that causes distress, worry, and fear to an individual. Some types of anxiety include the following: panic disorder, social anxiety disorder, specific phobias, and a generalized anxiety disorder with unrealistic worry (WebMD, 2016). The cause for anxiety is currently unknown, but environmental stress and changes in the brain can be linked factors (WebMD, 2016). Anxiety disorders affect 40 million adults who are 18 and older, this is 18% of the population in the United States (ADAA, 2014). General Anxiety Disorder alone affects 3.1% of the United States population and it most often affects
Anxiety Disorders are characterized by many symptoms and often associated with depressive tendencies. Although the majority are produced in a person based off of their genetic material, other influences exist environmentally that can encourage or discourage the severity of the symptoms and prognosis it has on one’s overall well-being. Early diagnosis and a systematic combination of treatments can help reduce the tensions and encourage a more normal life than what was previously experienced by the person with the disorder.
Depression and anxiety are the two most common mental illnesses in the world today. They make a person view the world as an ugly, scary place. Many people develop one or the other, and some develop both. Depression and anxiety are two very different mental illnesses but many people only see the similarities between them, instead of seeing the difference in their symptoms and emotions.
A myriad of Americans experience some form of anxiety disorder. The number of affected people comes up to almost 20 million. What impedes the progress of recovery is that it is not easy to find the underlying cause of the problem. There are many reasons that contribute to anxiety disorders and these reasons vary from one person to another.
Anxiety disorders are serious medical illnesses that affect approximately 19 million American adults. These disorders fill people's lives
Anxiety is an illness that can happen to anyone and it’s highly common. People usually have anxiety disorders when being under major stress, either work, personal issues, or school related. The most common causes for adults is when they are in a debt, process of divorce, or even when they lose a loved one. Others experience anxiety when there isn’t enough air in high elevation areas, that can happen to anyone. According to the article “Medical News Today” by The MNT Editorial Team, these cause would fall under environmental factors. Prescriptions can also cause anxiety. If someone is prescribed a medicine to treat an illness the medicine’s side effects can include anxiety, even the disease that the person’s body is fighting can result
These two are often linked due to the many similarities between the two disorders. This includes physical symptoms, such as fatigue and the uncontrollable worry, treatments such as, reactions to the same drugs, and a high co-morbidity rate, with both of these disorders having at least one other disorder at the same time. Studies have shown as high as thirty percent of people have two different anxiety disorders at the same time (Wehrenberg, 2007). While, up to fifty percent of people are cited to have both generalized anxiety and a form of depression at the same time (Wehrenberg,
The symptoms of anxiety and depression are closely related. While there are different variations of anxiety and depression there are multiple symptoms. The symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder include feeling wound up and on edge, concentrating can be difficult, muscle tension, sleeping issues, being fatigued, and increased irritability. Panic disorder symptoms involve immediate repeated attacks of fear, intense worries about future panic attacks, avoiding places where panic attacks happened previously. Social anxiety disorder has symptoms that involve felling self-conscious
Scores from this measure ranged from 16 to 80, with 60 being classified as experiencing GAD. Scores were almost the same between the pregnant and postpartum women. Many women met the clinical cutoff for depressive, insomnia, and generalized anxiety symptoms. The measures (ISI=0.87, EPDS=0.85, PSWQ=0.95) all scored above the clinical threshold. All three measures were also correlated in each group and in the total sample. Studies suggested that the relationship between depression symptoms and insomnia symptoms was influenced by generalized anxiety disorder in pregnant women. Symptoms of depression were present in 75% of the women and 61% had generalized anxiety disorder. Therefore the study suggested that the contribution of the two
(National Institute Mental Health) Anxiety comes in many forms you have many different anxieties. There are exactly 8 different types of anxiety, those being general anxiety disorder, panic disorder, phobia, posttraumatic stress disorder and finally, obsessive-compulsive disorder. The most common type of anxiety is Generalized Anxiety Disorder which is approximately 20 percent of the world’s population (G.A.D.). G.A.D. is not having any interest in everyday activities. According to the national institute of mental health you are going to have constant worry or fear when experiencing anxiety (“Anxiety Disorders”). Panic disorder which contains about 1.5 percent of the population is when you have repeated panic attacks that’s not caused by other illnesses. It can be triggered by intense exercise or truly dangerous situations, they generally become even worse when you experience a lot of stress at one time. You would generally use psychotherapy to treat this form of anxiety. Phobia disorder is a “persistent, irrational fear of,
Some people do experience both anxiety and depression. Why? Let 's talk a bit about both disorders and you will see how they can be somewhat related, and how one has the possibility of leading to the other. Sometimes, a person can start with one disorder and before they know it, the other one sneaks up on them. In certain circles that is called "double indemnity". Want to know more? How one often leads to the other. Anxiety, simply described, is obsessive nervousness and worry. It can be related to things that happened in the past (like post traumatic stress disorder) or it can be related to something that might happen in the future (like panic disorder). Depression, on the other hand, is identified, in its simplest form, by a loss of interest and/or enjoyment in anything the person used to do, including daily activities. So it is easy to see how one of these would lead to the other, sort of a progression as it were. In other words, how can you enjoy your life if you are constantly worried and nervous? Crudely put, anxiety empties the joy out of life, and the basic definition of depression is a joyless life. So how do you treat anxiety and depression? Both anxiety and depression are unfounded thoughts and feelings that are not connected with reality, and most of time, spiral out of control. Doctors will treat both with the same or similar prescription medications. That is what they are trained to do. You might want to find out the side effects before deciding to