Generalised Anxiety Disorder

Generalised Anxiety Disorder causes ongoing and excessive worry surrounding regular daily events for more than 6 months. Individuals experience recurring irrational worries and fears most days and can become easily overwhelmed by this. Areas that often cause worry for individuals with Generalised Anxiety disorder include Money, health, social interactions, work, job security, being late, natural or world disasters, crime or friends and family. However, this is dependent on the individual and can include any event. This constant worry can affect the individual’s concentration and focus, interfering with their ability to carry out everyday tasks both at work and at home, and also create physical symptoms such as nausea, stomach-aches, headaches, along with fatigue, muscle tension and sleep problems, which greatly impact of the individual ability to perform at work, and also often lead to having to take more sick days due to the physical symptoms.

Social Anxiety Disorder

Individuals who have Social Anxiety Disorder or Social Phobia experience overwhelming anxiety due to a fear of being judged, rejected, scrutinised or humiliated by others in social situations. Social anxiety can manifest in a range of situations, anything from attending a party, job interviews, speaking during meetings, giving a speech or presentation during a work meeting. This fear makes individuals extremely anxious and self-conscious, often worrying about upcoming events days or even weeks ahead of time. Those who have social anxiety disorder suffer from recurring intrusive negative thoughts that heighten this fear and can be difficult to manage. This can result in individuals avoiding social situations altogether, resulting in difficulty for individuals to establish and maintain relationships with friends or colleagues and can negatively impact the ability to work or study.

Signs of Social Anxiety Disorder

• Extreme fear of rejection, judgement or scrutiny

• Recurring anxiety leading up to events

• Avoiding social situations

• Being very self-conscious around other people

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is an anxiety disorder that occurs after some people experience a traumatic event or witness a traumatic event. Everyone will experience some symptoms following a traumatic event; however, these will usually resolve over time. For some people though the symptoms will continue for over a month and continue to interfere with the individual’s daily life. The main symptom that distinguishes PTSD from other anxiety disorders is re-experiencing the trauma after the event. This occurs through flashbacks and nightmares.

Symptoms of PTSD

• Hypervigilance

• Experiencing flashbacks or nightmares of the experience

• Easily startled and jumpy

• Avoidance of similar situations, places or people where the event occurred.

• Withdrawal from regular social interactions.

• Difficulty concentrating

• Feeling irritable, angry and tense

• Sleep difficulty

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Obsessive-Compulsive disorder is an anxiety disorder that is identified by the presence of intrusive thoughts that cause distress, accompanied by compulsive behaviours that are carried out by the individual in order to relieve the anxiety or distress. A person who is suffering from OCD might experience obsessive thoughts around germs, to relieve this anxiety they may engage in excessive hand washing. The compulsive behaviours can then get in the way of everyday activities and interfere with the individual’s lives as the individual feels that they must complete the compulsive behaviour otherwise what they fear will become true. This can become quite disabling for those with obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Panic Disorders

Panic disorders are another type of anxiety disorder that is usually accompanied by other mental health or anxiety disorders. Panic disorders involve individuals experiencing frequent panic attacks. Panic attacks are sudden intense experiences of anxiety that quickly overwhelm an individual within a few minutes accompanied by extreme feelings of dread and fear. Panic attacks generally only last a few minutes but are extremely frightening. Physical symptoms during a panic attack include difficulty breathing, rapid heartbeat, sweating, nausea, chest pain and dizziness. Individuals often feel that they are unable to control the attack and fear they may die because of it. Panic attacks can be caused by anxiety-provoking triggers, or sometimes may not have a clear trigger. Having a panic disorder can also create more anxiety for the individual because they are fearful of when the next attack might occur, and it is not uncommon for people to withdraw, and avoid going places in fear that they may have an attack.