Anxiety: Symptoms, Causes, Treatment, Causes & Types

Complications of Anxiety Disorder

Anxiety disorder can have debilitating effects on the quality of your life, causing complications such as:

• Development of other mental illnesses, especially depression
• Insomnia
• High blood pressure and heart disease
• Bowel disturbances
• Isolation
• Suicidal ideation and tendencies 

Diagnosis of Anxiety Disorder

When you visit your doctor with that idea that you might have anxiety, they will first evaluate your overall health before moving to more direct questioning. This is important to rule out any underlying medical conditions that might be responsible for symptoms of anxiety. 

Generally, anxiety is not easy to diagnose unless you begin showing extreme changes in behavior. A set of tests may be used by mental health experts to confirm if you have an anxiety disorder. These tests are usually questionnaires that assess your symptoms or degree of stress to help diagnose generalized or specific anxiety disorders. Your doctor might use:

• Beck Anxiety Inventory
• Zung Self-Rating Anxiety Scale
• Hamilton Anxiety Scale
• Social Phobia Inventory
• Penn State Worry Questionnaire
• Generalized Anxiety Disorder Scale
• Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale

Considering how symptoms of anxiety can be triggered by multiple factors including drug abuse, hormonal activity or your routine, you should be completely honest when giving your history.

Diagnostic Criteria for Generalized Anxiety Disorder

According to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorders, an individual must meet the following criteria to be diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder:

• Excessive worrying for six months or more
• Experiencing at least 3 of the following symptoms of anxiety disorder (1 in the case of children):
  • Fatigue
  • Irritability
  • Muscle ache or soreness
  • Difficulty in sleeping
  • Inability to concentrate
  • Restlessness
• Failure to control one’s thoughts or hesitance in discussing triggering topics
• Symptoms must not result from substance abuse
• Symptoms must not result from another mental illness or health condition

Treatment of Anxiety

In many cases, anxiety can be managed at home by taking care of your diet and sleep. If you are at risk of developing an anxiety disorder, or have been diagnosed with it, you should avoid drinking too much alcohol or caffeinated beverages to prevent anxiety from spiking. It is important to recognize triggers of stress that might cause an anxiety disorder, and avoid them as much as possible. Guided meditation for stress and anxiety is a good way to control anxiety symptoms. It is also known as guided imagery therapy, and involves visualizing situations or places that you find soothing. 

For more severe cases, treatment of anxiety disorder may follow one of two possible routes, or both:

• Psychotherapy: A psychologist could help you rationalize your thoughts and introduce you to different strategies that you can use to deal with anxiety surrounding various situations, known as cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT).

• Medication: Anxiety symptoms can be dealt with using antidepressants and anti-anxiety drugs. Beta-blockers may be prescribed to provide short-term relief as they depress your body’s response to stress.

How to Prevent Anxiety?

You can prevent anxiety by making some easy adjustments to your lifestyle. A few factors that can help you maintain healthy mental and physical health include:

• Exercising regularly
• Maintaining a healthy sleep schedule
• Eating a balanced diet 
• Avoiding alcohol, smoking or high quantities of caffeine
• Communicating your feelings openly with loved ones or writing them down
• Doing things more often that bring you comfort 
• Avoiding tasks as much as possible that you might find stressful 

To understand more about the causes, diagnosis and treatment of anxiety, get in touch with us.