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Anxiety Panic Disorder

Medically Recommended Psychologist Supported

In the United States alone, millions of people deal with an anxiety panic disorder, which manifests in serious physical reactions such as increased heart rate, excessive sweating, shaking, shortness of breath, mental confusion, dilating pupils, and a sense of overwhelming fear, often leading a person to cry or scream. While panic attacks are not life threatening, to the person experiencing one, there is a sense of impending death. Because an anxiety panic disorder is a real health problem, it needs to be properly diagnosed and treated. While the actual cause needs investigating, typically, these attacks are brought on by an accident, illness, or trauma.

A person going through a panic attack will start to experience symptoms and within a few minutes, the attack climaxes. The degree and symptoms associated with an anxiety panic disorder varies depending on how often a person has an attack. This means for someone that goes through two or more attacks within a single month, the attacks would intensify, which leads to a sense of complete fear.

Interestingly, women between the ages of 20 and 30 are more prone to an anxiety panic disorder than other people are. Younger people that have attacks generally have less frequent attacks but often, the underlying cause relates back to a bad childhood experience. In some cases, an anxiety panic disorder begins out of nowhere and quickly escalates while other times, the attacks might start slowly and then gradually build.

The biggest challenge associated with an anxiety panic disorder is that medical tests are inconclusive, making diagnosis hard or even missed. In fact, many people will see one specialist after another over a period of years, hearing numerous opinions and getting several treatments but without relief. For this reason, people need an appropriate evaluation and diagnosis to get help. Without a good diagnosis, people might feel the only way to get relief is by avoiding the situations or circumstances that trigger an attack.

For instance, a person living with an anxiety panic disorder might stay away from social situations such as going to church, shopping, dining out, getting on an elevator, flying, going to school, or even meeting with friends. Obviously, the person in this state begins to lose quality of life, finding that daily activities are impossible. When this happens, the individual faces a new problem in the form of depression. At this point, some people trying to deal with the anxiety and the depression will begin to abuse drugs and alcohol or even consider suicide as a means of self medicating.

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