Generalized Anxiety Disorder
What is generalized anxiety disorder?
Generalized Anxiety Disorder is a chronic disabling mental health condition in which individuals have persistent worries about almost every trivial issue and often anticipate the worst about everything for at least six months.
What are the signs and symptoms of Generalized Anxiety Disorder?
Excessive anxiety and worry about many things, situations, and events, occurring more days than not for at least six months
Individuals find it difficult to control the worry and tend to worry about worrying about everything.
Anxiety and worry are associated with:
Restlessness or feeling keyed up and on edge
Easy fatiguability
Poor concentration
Irritability
Muscle tension
Difficulty falling or staying asleep or restless sleep
The anxiety and worry are not focused on just specific objects, conditions, situations, or events but are more generalized to every situation or event and the anxiety impairs the social, occupational, and other important areas of functioning.
How common is Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Over the lifetime about 4 out of every hundred individuals would develop a Generalized Anxiety Disorder
Generalized Anxiety Disorder is more common in females than males
What causes Generalized Anxiety Disorder?
Generalized Anxiety Disorder is caused by a combination of genetic, psychological, social and environmental factors.
How is Generalized Anxiety Disorder treated?
If you feel you may have Generalized Anxiety Disorder, consider visiting your Family Doctor or talk to a healthcare professional.
Your doctor will take a history from you, do a mental state examination, perform a physical examination, and may order some blood tests before confirming you have Generalized Anxiety Disorder.
Once it is confirmed you have Generalized Anxiety Disorder, your doctor may prescribe you some medication called antidepressants, and in some cases, your doctor may refer you to see a psychiatrist, who is a doctor who is an expert in treating individuals with mental health difficulties.
Your doctor may also refer you to a clinical psychologist or mental health therapist or counsellor to receive psychological treatment referred to commonly as Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT).
CBT is a form of counselling in which the therapist helps an individual change the negative patterns of thinking which affects the individual’s behaviour and attitudes and are commonly associated with anxiety.
Your doctor or mental health therapist may also refer you to a social worker, government agency or other organization to get help with social issues which may be contributing to your anxiety.
Other self-help treatments include eating healthy balanced food and physical exercise.
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