Panic or severe anxiety, particularly when it's coupled with other conditions such as depression, may pose a significant risk for suicide. Among individuals reporting a lifetime history of suicide attempt, over 70% had an anxiety disorder.
What is Anxiety?
Anxiety is a normal reaction to stress. It helps one deal with a tense situation in the office, study harder for an exam, keep focused on an important speech. In general, it helps one cope. But when anxiety becomes an excessive, irrational dread of everyday situations, it has become a disabling disorder.
Symptoms of anxiety include:
- Rapid heart beat
- Pounding heart or palpitations
- Visible shaking
- Choking sensations or lump in throat
- Feeling of being smothered or shortness of breath
- Chest pain or discomfort
- Nausea, bloating, indigestion or abdominal discomfort
- Dizziness or unsteadiness
- Feeling light-headed
- Derealization (feeling unreal or dreamy)
- Depersonalization (feeling outside yourself or like you don't exist)
- Fear of losing control or going crazy
- Paresthesias (numbness or tingling sensations) in face, extremities or body
- Chills or hot flushes
- Skin loses color or Blushing/skin blotches
- Urgently needing to urinate or defecate
- Aching muscles
- General fatigue
- Headaches/migraines/tenderness in head (pains in the muscular tissues of the neck and back can cause blood vessels and nerves to become restricted)
What Causes Anxiety?
An imbalance in the organ responsible for the anxiety response in the brain called the amygdala causes various types of anxiety disorders including panic attacks. This organ acts like an anxiety switch. Normally, the switch is in the OFF position and only gets activated when it's appropriate to feel anxious in anxiety disorders
What Helps Anxiety?
- Talk therapy