The major types of Anxiety Disorder

Anxiety is a normal part of healthy stressing over the things in our life that require attention.  The natural effect of basic stress levels is to keep our lives in check, ensuring that our bills are paid and we have gas in our tank.   However, when anxiety takes over our lives, produces actual anxiety attacks and causes us to be unable to function normally we have an overdose of anxiety and it may be at a level characterized by panic attacks and other evidence of a serious disorder.

There are four basic types of Anxiety Disorder, categorized by both their symptoms and their effect on our lives:

1.  GAD, or Generalized Anxiety Disorder – This disorder is characterized by the extreme anxiety over everyday things without regard to their relative priority or importance.  In sufferers of this disorder the fear of not getting that birthday card is equally as traumatic as that of the house burning down.  The primary sufferers of this disorder are women and overly emotional people who are probably already experiencing depression.  Treatments include both tranquilizers and antidepressants for symptomatic relief along with behavior modification to help the patient address their fears and locate the source of the disorder.

2.  OCD, or Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder – This disorder is characterized by the overwhelming need to repeat trivial behavior, extreme fear of germs, and other obsessions with the fear that something awful will occur if they fail to follow their compulsions.  Sufferers tend to be diagnosed in their early thirties, there may be a genetic predisposition to experience the disorder, there may be a family or genetic predisposition and there are frequent sufferers who also experienced brain trauma or brain disease.  Treatment includes a broad range of medication and deep behavior modification through extensive therapy.

3.  SAD, or Social Anxiety Disorder – Individuals with SAD panic in group or social settings and they also include those with stage fright and anything wherein their appearance or performance is under scrutiny or approval-review.  While a genetic link is being researched, there is no evidence that anyone has a predisposition to suffer this disorder.  Medication and therapy are the common treatments to prevent anxiety attacks. 

4. PTSD, or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder – Individuals with this disorder have experienced or witnessed an extremely traumatic event, life threat or confining imprisonment and the relive the event-stored trauma, fear and panic whenever the event or thoughts of it reappear.  It is most common in combat veterans, rape victims and the like.  It is gender-independent and it produces the most severe panic attacks of all the anxiety disorders.  Its treatment includes strong dosages of antidepressants and mood-altering drugs combined with extensive and intensive cognitive behavior modification to prevent the panic attacks.