Generalized Anxiety - Some tips

Generalized Anxiety Disorder-GAD

     Excessive worries about more than one circumstance characterize this anxiety problem. People with GAD are "bothered" or "worried" most of the time. Many times the worries are unrealistic, such as "What if my son goes to today and gets in an accident?" or "What if I lose my job and I become homeless?" All of us think about things like this, but people with GAD fixate on them and can’t get them out of their mind. Generalized anxiety has been termed free-floating because it can come and go at will, without apparent reason. Physical symptoms of GAD include bodily tenseness, lump in the throat, trouble falling asleep, dry throat, and difficulty in concentrating. It is very hard for the person with generalized anxiety to just be still and relax.

    It is also possible that people with current generalized anxiety symptoms have experienced panic attacks in the past, become agoraphobic, and begin to exhibit symptoms typical of generalized anxiety disorder. Unfortunately, without treatment, they continue to remain restricted in their lives and fear or dislike going too far away from home.

Diagnosis

    The essential feature is anxiety, which is generalized and persistent but not restricted to, or even strongly predominating in, any particular environmental circumstances (i.e. it is "free-floating"). As in other anxiety disorders the dominant symptoms are highly variable, but complaints of continuous feelings of nervousness, trembling, muscular tension, sweating, lightheadedness, palpitations, dizziness, and epigastric discomfort are common. Fears that the sufferer or a relative will shortly become ill or have an accident are often expressed, together with a variety of other worries and forebodings. This disorder is more common in women, and often related to chronic environmental stress. Its course is variable but tends to be fluctuating and chronic. 

    The sufferer must have primary symptoms of anxiety most days for at least several weeks at a time, and usually for several months. These symptoms should usually involve elements of:

   (a) apprehension (worries about future misfortunes, feeling "on edge", difficulty in concentrating, etc.);
   (b) motor tension (restless fidgeting, tension headaches, trembling, inability to relax); and
   (c) autonomic overactivity (lightheadedness, sweating, tachycardia or tachypnoea, epigastric discomfort, dizziness, dry mouth, etc.).

In children, frequent need for reassurance and recurrent somatic complaints may be prominent.

    The transient appearance (for a few days at a time) of other symptoms, particularly depression, does not rule out generalized anxiety disorder as a main diagnosis, but the sufferer must not meet the full criteria for depressive episode, phobic anxiety disorder, panic disorder, or obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Includes:
*anxiety neurosis
*anxiety reaction
* anxiety state

Anxiety is the largest mental health care problems in the world today

Generalized anxiety disorder is estimated to affect 3-4% of the entite world population.