Understanding Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety Disorders
Very similar to depression, anxiety disorders emerge from an intricate set of
vulnerabilities: brain chemistry, genetics, personality, and life altering events.
Merely 20 million American adults are plagued by anxiety disorders.

Anxiety and fear are real emotions. The terms anxiety and fear have unique scientific meanings, but everyday language has made them quite interchangeable. It is known that phobia is a type of anxiety that is also defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 4th edition (DSM-IV-TR) as a "persistent or irrational fear."

Definitions of Fear : an emotional and physiological response to a recognized external threat (eg, a robber or accident about to happen). Anxiety is a pleasant emotional state, its causes are not easy to recognize. It is usually accompanied by physiological reaction that may lead to fatigue and eventually exhaustion. Because fear of intending danger causes similar unpleasant mental and physical changes, most people use the terms fear and anxiety interchangeably.

Thanks to the advancements in clinical trials and medical science, anxiety disorders are treatable. The fact is that approximately 30 percent of anxiety disorder sufferers receive treatment.