Anxiety Disorders

According to National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) “more than 19 million adult Americans ages 18 to 54 have anxiety disorders.” Anxiety disorders are clinically distinct from transitional anxiety experienced during events such as a wedding, moving into a new home, dealing with the illness or death of a loved one, or beginning a new job. Individuals with anxiety disorders may experience feelings of panic, extreme physical, mental, or emotional stress, and intense fear. Due to the highly individualized nature of psychiatric disabilities, anxiety disorders can present in numerous ways, and significantly impact the functionality of individuals with this disability.

Some of these disorders include:

Generalized Anxiety Disorder - Excessive worrying about everything. Person knows that it is irrational but cannot stop worrying. If severe, can be very debilitating.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder - Person has repeated thoughts that they try to relieve by doing an action. For instance, a person who thinks that he has germs on his hands, will wash his hands in order to relieve the stress of feeling dirty. Unfortunately, the thought comes back and he will do the action (washing his hands) as often as the thoughts come. His hands may become raw from continual hand washing.

Panic Disorder - Person has extreme symptoms of anxiety such as racing heartbeat, chest pain, trembling, headache, nausea, etc. for no particular reason. Person then avoids situations where the panic feelings took place. Avoidances can lead to agoraphobia which is the fear of going out of one's house.

Social Phobia - Person feels extreme stress when having to perform in front of others or when having to interact with other people.

Specific Phobias - Include such things as fear of heights, animals, injections, etc.

For a screening tool and more information on these and other anxiety disorders visit:

http://psychcentral.com/disorders/sx24.htm

Serving Customers with Anxiety

Updated September, 2009 by Cassy Polen, Disability Program Navigator.