Anxiety Disorder Prevention

Anxiety Disorder Prevention: the First Step to Stopping Anxiety Disorders Wilneydi Lopez The Academy for Arts Science and Technology November 22, 2013

Anxiety Disorder Prevention

Anxiety Disorder Prevention: the First Step to Stopping Anxiety Disorders Anxiety affects children at an early age and if it is not treated, it affects them for the rest of their lives. One of the most common types of anxiety is OCD, which is a commonly misused word. Anxiety is not just stress, but instead it is a domino effect type of disease that can lead to many other mental issues such as depressive disorders and eating disorders. It is time for people to stop just worrying about the problem and instead try to prevent it. It is predicted that anxiety will increase more each year, until awareness is brought about. What is Anxiety? Anxiety affects the mind and the body. It is constant, Thoughts of future threat (Craske, Rauch, Ursano, Prenoveau, Pine, Zinbarg, 2009, 10). It occurs in the people that want to be prepared for anything and are consumed with negative thoughts about future events. It is all about the things in life that cannot be controlled. People with anxiety often feel guilty for something in their past and decide to control their future. Anxiety affects the physical body by causing things such as muscle tension and aches. It often gives the body a heavy feeling, causing less physical productivity from people. For generations, anxiety has been viewed as a good way to get things done. A light dose of stress can help a person function better because they would do more work. Anxiety, on the other hand, is about irrational fears that cannot be destroyed with a simple task. There are many types of anxiety disorders such as separation anxiety disorder, social phobia, generalized anxiety disorder, etc. These include extreme cases where fear strikes the heart of the person who has to be with a crowd of people or the ones who have to leave someone. All of these disorders are best observed in children because demonstrate their feelings, unlike many adults. There was a study done to observe the way children are affected with emotions.

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Children with anxiety disorders and without it were used during the experiment. The children watched an animated show in which the character showed a range of emotions. The end result was that the children with these disorders could not handle all of the emotions or they didnt realize there was a change in emotions. Children [with] separation anxiety disorder (SAD) showed deficits in overall emotional recognition (Lee, Dupuis, Jones, Guberman, Herbert, Manassis, 2013, 3). The problem with anxiety is not just that it gives too many emotions that are too much to handle, it also deprives people of understanding normal emotions. The stress of daily life is a light topic. Everyone has concerns and little things that disturb their usual day. Anxiety disorders, on the other hand, are medical conditions that can damage a persons life from their childhood to adulthood. This immense doom that is sitting on victims shoulders lead to other psychological problems such as depressions, eating disorders, personality disorders, etc. The Anxiety and Depression Association of America have surveyed that, around 42 percent had developed an anxiety disorder during childhood, well before the onset of their eating disorderbut panic disorder often follows (ADAA, 2004, 20). This does not only mean that anxiety comes about at an early age, it also means that it brings along multiple problems. Eating disorders may appear later in adulthood, but usually target the adolescent population who have anxious thoughts about reaching perfection. The most common Anxiety disorder and the most misinterpreted is OCD, obsessive compulsive disorder. This term is thrown around in society as a description for someone who forcefully wants things a certain way. OCD is a very serious problem that leads to unrealistic goals that must be religiously met daily and affects a persons way of life. Often, OCD enforces things such as eating disorders. For those with eating disorders, OCD could mean weighing every ounce of food before eating it (ADAA, 2004). Depressions are also caused by anxiety disorders. Although depression is the

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loss of feeling and anxiety is feeling too much, anxiety can lead to depression. After months or even years of constant panic and never resting, deep sadness settles in. As Erika wrote on a blog, All I want to do is cry, but I dont feel as though there are any more tears left to cry. Anxiety is an understatement (Erika, 2013, 35). Anxiety disorders became an issue when it robbed children of their childhood and when it invited other problematic disorders into the mix. Effects on Children Anxiety is directly stemmed to many other disorders, especially depressive disorder. When the kids are very young their symptoms can be noticed by the way they act such as sudden fear towards a situation. They cling on to their parents because that is the only safety they understand. As the child is ignored, he grows up to believe that his symptoms are a normal part of life and he ignores it all together. An experiment was done on one-hundred and forty kids as they fought their depressive disorder. The follow up ranged from three to seven years. The kids who grow up with depressive disorder had a 92.6% of a chance at full remission as long as help was found early on (Dudley, Ford, Taffe, and Tonge, 2013). The problem with this is that not enough of those kids seek help and never attain it. Recurrence of depressive disorder (52.4%) during the follow-up period was common, as was the experience of other disorders including anxiety, substance abuse and eating disorders (Dudley, Ford, Taffe, and Tonge, 2013, 1). One thing spiraled into a bigger dilemma for those who did not seek help. The constant feeling of not being enough and the pain it caused led people towards substance abuse because they could not find guidance. Alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, etc. are the common outlets that most teenagers to use to deal with their problems. A teenager on a forum commented that her anxiety was accompanied by stomach pains and heaviness in her head (Wing of Madness Depression Guide, 2010). Common knowledge about teenagers is that they are always tired. That is true, but to an extent.

Anxiety Disorder Prevention

Teenagers with anxiety fall victim to depression and they feel tired in every sense of the way. As another person commented on a depression article I could sleep all day and night if I could but I am mentally and emotionally exhausted too (Wing of Madness Depression Guide, 2010, 30). This persons personal experience with battling depression lasted for years and he was acknowledging that so far he was losing. Many of the kids on the article did not report trying to get help because they felt ashamed. Anxiety can come at an early age, adolescent mental health reported that about 8 percent of [teenagers] ages 13-18 have an anxiety disorder, with symptoms commonly emerging around age 6(National Institute of Mental Health, N/A, 4). This is crucial time for a parent to seek out anxiety symptoms in their children. Unlike stress, Anxiety lasts for at least six months and builds up. This makes it easier to understand when a stress morphs into a disease that consumes many lives. Out of the one-hundred and forty kids that were questioned in an experiment, only 18% of the teenagers received mental health care (NIMH, N/A). This means that many of those kids that struggled through their childhood kept their anxiety even in adulthood. Effects on Adults Children are often times believed to be too young to be diagnosed with any kind of disorder. Most of the problems are found in adulthood. The importance of parents understanding their anxiety is great because what they do is passed on to their children. Sometimes anxiety is a learned behavior. When a parent or a caregiver puts a child in a stressful environment they will have issues with distress, vigilance, and fear of potential abandonment. This impacts their future such as their social relationships and how they view themselves. (Drake, Ginsburg, 2012). An important note that not many people understand is that the mother and child relationship is also pertinent. It is proven that, Preschool children who show anxiety, are inhibited, have

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overinvolved mothers and mothers with anxiety disorders are at increased risk for anxiety in middle childhood (Hudson, Dodd, 2012, 4). It is a scary thought for mothers that the danger may not be outside the home, but inside. Many mothers believe that ignoring a child will force the child to become filled with anxiety and abandonment issues. By worrying too much for their child they become helicopter parents. These are the parents that are overprotective, give excessive criticism and express their fear and anxiety in front of their children. (Nauert, 200914). Their intentions may be for the best, but the strategy does not help the child it only hinders their success in life. The Hopkins team decided to study forty children between the ages of seven and twelve. The kids did not have anxiety, but their parents were diagnosed with anxiety. Half of those children were treated, while the other half were kept on a waiting list with a promise that they would be treated the next full year. Thirty percent of the children not treated gained an anxiety disorder, while the kids that were treated did not. This proved that parents have an effect on children and it gave the result that children with anxious parents are seven times more likely to get an anxiety disorder (Nauert, 2009). Adults that do not gain knowledge about themselves and their anxiety levels run the risk of passing it on to their children. Early Intervention The most important step to stopping the increase of anxiety disorder in children is prevention. Anxiety is a serious issue that leads to multiple problems in life, but it is a problem that has a solution. Instead of seeking treatment after the problem has fully settled, it is best for it to be prevented. Three steps to help with this are lowering the heavy load, getting parents and the society to recognize anxiety as a problem, and seeking professional help. A group of scientists concluded, Rehabilitation processes would benefit from deeper knowledge of the individual's capacity to work in order to make efficient adjustments at work (Bertilsson,

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Petersson, stlund, Waern, Hensing, 2013, 1). This means that a person should not be overloaded and expected to do more than possible. The job should fit the person and this is important when it comes to the person completing the job. The society as a whole should be educated on the reality of anxiety. Prevention, rather than treatment, of childhood anxiety is critical because anxiety disorders affect one in five U.S. children but often go unrecognized, according to a recent editorial in The New England Journal of Medicine (Nauert, 2009, 8). Offering the population therapists that are ready to help is good, but many of the people with anxiety do not know they have it. It is better for them to be aware of the presence of anxiety disorders, so that they can get help. Prevention can be achieved with intervention programs [that] could incorporate exposure hierarchies and modules on recognizing anxiety, generating brave thoughts and coping skills (Hudson, Dodd, 2012, 33). The people need the proper weapons to fight anxiety, which is knowledge about it. Anxiety is preventable, so the first step is to help the people become aware. Conclusion The research proved that there are not enough people getting the help that they need. Children start at an early age and they do not know how to dissect what they are feeling. Often times their parents also have a lot of anxiety and accidently feed it to the children. Without the consent of both parties, the cycle of anxiety continues and gets more severe. The problem with anxiety is that it involves other lethal disorders that have taken many lives. Countless teenagers have committed suicide because of their depressive disorders and many have hurt their bodies with eating disorders. It is not just worry, but heightened distress that the body cannot deal with. A few of the articles that were used were biased as in a personal account was used. The forum about depression was open to any person to comment on their personal story. This

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measure did not seem problematic because understanding mental issues is different from personal to personal. Scientists cannot understand the extent of how a patient is feeling only that it is feeling it. Next time, the experiment will include personal studies that were documented over time. These findings prove that preventative measures must be taken, but at first it would be hard to implement. As with any new information, each detail would first be dissected by psychologists, scientists, and the people. The research adds to the psychological theory that the mind is an important player that must not be forgotten. Future research for this should be completed on kids ages six to fifteen with and without anxiety disorders. Anxiety disorders can be broken down and specified person by person. These disorders can lead to other problems that affect the body and the mind. It can be the factor that alters a childhood or ends an adult life. Many things can be blamed such as the society, parents, environment, and education system. There is no exact trigger for everyone, so it is harder to understand when a person has an anxiety disorder. As it has been proven, the best effort against diseases has been education. People should be aware of the existing problem, so that many difficulties can be prevented. Anxiety does not affect just one person; it affects the population as a whole.

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References Bertilsson, M., Petersson, E., stlund, G., Waern, M., & Hensing, G. (2013). Capacity to work while depressed and anxious - a phenomenological study. Disability & Rehabilitation, 35(20), 1705-1711. doi:10.3109/09638288.2012.751135 Retrieved September 29, 2013, From http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=8&sid=2e493c82-735b-40af-b29f860440c5e4d6%40sessionmgr13&hid=24&bdata=#db=aph&AN=90132142 Craske, M. G., Rauch, S. L., Ursano, R., Prenoveau, J., Pine, D. S., & Zinbarg, R. E. (2009). What is an anxiety disorder?. Depression & Anxiety (1091-4269), 26(12), 1066-1085. doi:10.1002/da.20633. http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=35fa643742b251a9b435%40sessionmgr4&vid=6&hid=9 Drake, K., & Ginsburg, G. (2012). Family Factors in the Development, Treatment, and Prevention of Childhood Anxiety Disorders. Clinical Child & Family Psychology Review, 15(2), 144-162. doi:10.1007/s10567-011-0109-0. Retrieved September 19, 2013, from http://ehis.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=37dc573a-942f-4184ab90-097c986c6ea1%40sessionmgr112&vid=7&hid=101 Hudson, J., & Dodd, H. (2012, August 8). PLOS ONE: Informing Early Intervention: Preschool Predictors of Anxiety Disorders in Middle Childhood. PLOS ONE : accelerating the publication of peer-reviewed science. Retrieved September 18, 2013, from http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0042359#abstr act0 b211-45a1-aded-

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Melvin, G., Dudley, A., Gordon, M., Ford, S., Taffe, J., & Tonge, B. (2013). What happens to depressed adolescents? A follow-up study into early adulthood. Journal Of Affective Disorders, 151(1), 298-305. doi:10.1016/j.jad.2013.06.012. Retrieved September 29, 2013, from http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=6&sid=2e493c82-735b-40af-b29f860440c5e4d6%40sessionmgr13&hid=24&bdata=#db=cmedm&AN=23829999 NA, D. (n.d.). What does depression feel like? - Wing of Madness Depression Guide. Wing of Madness Depression Guide | Depression Information, News and Support Since 1995. Retrieved September 11, 2013, from http://www.wingofmadness.com/what-doesdepression-feel-like/ Nauert, R. (2009). Prevent Anxiety Disorders in Children. Psych Central. Retrieved on September 25, 2013, from http://psychcentral.com/news/2009/10/12/prevent-anxietydisorders-in-children/8906.html NIH. (n.d.). NIMH Anxiety Disorders. NIMH Home. Retrieved September 25, 2013, from http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/anxiety-disorders/index.shtml#part3 Ross, J. (n.d.). Eating Disorders | Anxiety and Depression Association of America, ADAA. Anxiety and Depression Association of America, ADAA | Anxiety Disorders are real, serious, and treatable. Retrieved September 29, 2013, from http://www.adaa.org/understanding-anxiety/related-illnesses/eating-disorders Trevor Changgun LeeDupuis, A. (2013). Effects of Age and Subtype on Emotional Recognition in Children With Anxiety Disorders: Implications for Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy. Canadian Journal Of Psychiatry, 58(5), 283. Retrieved September 25, 2013,

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from http://ehis.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=fc0c0b69-248d-4ea1b451-0fcdb3dd498d%40sessionmgr13&vid=7&hid=115