A recent study published in the American Journal of Psychiatry found patients suffering from generalized anxiety disorder, or GAD, have abnormalities in the way their brain unconsciously controls emotions.
According to the National Institute of Mental Health, 18 percent of Americans have an anxiety disorder. GAD in particular is marked by extreme feelings of fear and uncertainty; people with the disorder live in a state of non-stop worry and often struggle getting through their daily lives.
"Patient's experience anxiety and worry and respond excessively to emotionally negative stimuli, but it's never been clear really why," said Amit Etkin, MD, PhD, acting assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Stanford University School of Medicine and first author of the study.
Etkin recruited 17 people with GAD and 24 healthy participants and used functional magnetic resonance imaging and a behavioral marker to compare what happened when the two groups performed an emotion-based task. The task involved viewing images of happy or fearful faces, overlaid with the words "fear" or "happy," and using a button box to identify the expression of each face. Not all the words matched up -- some happy faces featured the word "fear," and vice versa -- which created an emotional conflict for participants.
GAD, or generalized anxiety disorder, is like being in a chronic or continued state of worry and anxiety. This can be a specific as a mother’s concern for her child who walks to school everyday. Or as general as being constantly worried about anything or everything you need to do during the day. Understand were not talking about general concern about safety crossing the street. Understand that there are varying degrees of almost any mental illness. While most people suffering from generalized anxiety disorder are able to continue to function, some are paralyzed by the fear of making any decision.
I love GAD. I eat it all the time
As an aside to the point made about drug and alcohol abuse. There is also the problem of habituation to prescribed medication for people fighting anxiety. The benzodiazepines spring particularly to mind. There is a sick irony that the medical profession are far too often compounding peoples problems. I speak from 20 years work as a nurse and therapist working with, amongst other areas, people with anxiety disorders and drug/alcohol problems.
Nataly Washington
Antianxiety-drugs.com