Anxiety disorder is a blanket term covering several different forms of abnormal and pathological fears and anxieties which only came under the aegis of psychiatry at the very end of the 19th century. Current psychiatric diagnostic criteria recognize a wide variety of anxiety disorders. Recent surveys have found that as many as 18% of Americans may be affected by one or more of them.
Anxiety disorders are often debilitating chronic conditions, whi...
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Anxiety disorder is a blanket term covering several different forms of abnormal and pathological fears and anxieties which only came under the aegis of psychiatry at the very end of the 19th century. Current psychiatric diagnostic criteria recognize a wide variety of anxiety disorders. Recent surveys have found that as many as 18% of Americans may be affected by one or more of them.
Anxiety disorders are often debilitating chronic conditions, which can be present from an early age or begin suddenly after a triggering event. They are prone to flare up at times of high stress and are frequently accompanied by physiological symptoms such as headache, sweating, muscle spasms, palpitations, and hypertension, which in some cases lead to fatigue or even exhaustion.
Although in casual discourse the words anxiety and fear are often used interchangeably, in clinical usage, they have distinct meanings; anxiety is defined as an unpleasant emotional state for which the cause is either not readily...
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