Anxiety Disorders - Mental Health Videos with Kati Morton

Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illnesses, affecting 19 million children and adults in the U.S., reports the Anxiety Disorders Association of America (ADAA).

ADAA also reports that the ailment consumes almost a third of the total $148 billion total mental health bill for the nation. That's not surprising, given people with anxiety disorder are three to five times more likely to go to the doctor, and six times more likely than non-sufferers to be hospitalized for psychiatric ailments.

Although anxiety disorder describes a group of illnesses such as generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, panic disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, and phobias, there are some symptoms that characterize the illness as a whole.

According to the American Psychiatric Association, when people suffering from anxiety disorders talk about their condition, they often include these descriptions:

Unrealistic or excessive worry
Exaggerated startled reactions
Sleep disturbances
Jitteriness
Fatigue
Dry mouth
Lump in throat
Trembling
Sweating
Racing or pounding heart

In the workplace, these symptoms could translate into difficulty working with colleagues and clients, trouble concentrating, preoccupation over the fear instead of focusing on work, and turning down assignments because of fear of failure, flying, going in to the elevator, or public speaking.

For people who think they might have anxiety disorder, Jeffrey P. Kahn, MD, a clinical psychiatrist and author of Mental Health and Productivity in the Workplace, recommends the following first steps of action:

Talk about the problem with someone you feel comfortable with. Also ask that person what he or she notices about you.
Take a break from your worry by playing sports, listening to music, praying, or meditating.
Join a self-help group.
If talking about the problem or relaxation techniques don't work, seek professional consultation.

Anxiety disorder is an umbrella term that covers several different forms of a type of common psychiatric disorder characterized by excessive rumination, worrying, uneasiness, apprehension and fear about future uncertainties either based on real or imagined events, which may affect both physical and psychological health.

There are numerous psychiatric and medical syndromes which may mimic the symptoms of an anxiety disorder such as hyperthyroidism which may be misdiagnosed as generalized anxiety disorder.

Individuals diagnosed with an anxiety disorder may be classified in one of two categories; based on whether they experience continuous or episodic symptoms.

Current psychiatric diagnostic criteria recognize a wide variety of anxiety disorders. Recent surveys have found that as many as 18% of Americans and 14% of Europeans may be affected by one or more of them.

The term anxiety covers four aspects of experiences an individual may have: mental apprehension, physical tension, physical symptoms and dissociative anxiety.Anxiety disorder is divided into generalized anxiety disorder, phobic disorder, and panic disorder; each has its own characteristics and symptoms and they require different treatment (Gelder et al. 2005). The emotions present in anxiety disorders range from simple nervousness to bouts of terror (Barker 2003).

Standardized screening clinical questionnaires such as the Taylor Manifest Anxiety Scale or the Zung Self-Rating Anxiety Scale can be used to detect anxiety symptoms, and suggest the need for a formal diagnostic assessment of anxiety disorder.

Kati Morton, MFTI
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Hey everyone!

This week's video topic comes to me

from you and all of your requests.

Anxiety disorders: What are they

and what do we do?

so stay tuned

so like I said this week's

topic is anxiety disorders

and after getting that

request from many of you

and then looking through the dsm

what actually falls under anxiety disorder

what is that criteria

there are a lot and

a couple of them i've already touched on

and a couple of them

i will touch on in future videos

but one is PTSD and

that is in a video that i did

probably about two months ago or so

so check out my PTSD video for questions

and you know comments about that

but another one i've had requested is OCD

which also falls under anxiety disorders

and that's Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

and I will do a video

on that at a later time

so don't forget to

subscribe to my channel

cause when i put it out

you're gonna want to know

so the first thing I want to

touch on and I have my dsm here

my handy dandy dsm

and just to try to make

this as clear as possible

the first part of anxiety disorders

that I want to talk about

wow that was a mouthful anxiety disorders

is generalized anxiety disorder

or GAD which i will call it

from now on cause

that makes it so much easier

so GAD is an excessive anxiety

and worry occurring

more days than not

for a period of at least 6 months

and I guess the best way that

I can think of this presenting itself

in my office is when I have a patient

who all they do is worry about.. let's see

what people think of them.

and that happens a lot

obviously this cannot otherwise be

attributed to an eating disorder

or something like that

if someone just has anxiety

over something else that

can be accounted for in another diagnosis

it's not GAD but

when I have people who have GAD

it's almost like they worry so much about

everything in their life like

I don't wanna be late for this

and what if i don't get

100% on that test

and oh my gosh and

my apartment isn't clean

and my friends are coming over i mean

everything is excessive worry

and the way that I

always think excessive is is that

it's more intense of a worry

than the actual situation warrants so

i know that sounds like therapy talk

and it's kind of annoying

but what i mean is like for me

if people are coming over to my house

and my house isn't really clean

i'd be like well when i get home

i'll tidy up as quick as i can

and let it be what it be, right?

Cause they're my friends and

they'll love me anyway

so that would be a normal quote unquote

normal relative worry

where you're like ugh it's dirty

but i need to clean it

and then you're over it right

oh i'll just do this

but a person with GAD can't really do that

they will excessively worry

about it so much that

it could ruin their day

they might wanna try to leave work early

and they may even like

hurt other's feelings

or do other things that are bad

for them in order to

alleviate this worry okay?

so that's gad generalized anxiety disorder

and as with all of the things that i talk about

i mean anxiety disorders have at least like i don't know

like 50 pages in the dsm so this is a very succinct version

now the next thing i wanna talk about is social phobia

now many of you talk about having social anxiety

and from what i can read in the dsm

social anxieyt isn't actually a diagnosis

under the anxiety disorders it would be called social phobia

and they say that the essential feature of social phobia

is a marked and persistent fear of social or performance

situations in which embarrassment may occur

now i find this to be most prevalent with my teen clients

and my young adult clients the ones in college and stuff

because we're in social situations a lot and it can be very

like we may be in a new high school and we're already

nervous and so then we start to worry about what

everybody thinks and we don't want to be embarrassed

and we don't want to embarrass ourselves

and oh that person's giggling uh they're giggling about me

and that's kind of how this presents itself

we think that a lot of times anybody that's giggling

or looking or somebody is pointing we automatically

think that they're talking about us we're doing something

embarrassing and it's terrible so that's kind of what

social phobia is and under social phobia it says

social anxiety disorder so that's kind of

where that falls and that is something that i honestly

along with all the anxiety disorders it's really important

that we go to therapy and we talk about this with someone

and we kind of process it through and in my experience

CBT cognitive behavioral therapy is the best with this

because we'll do what we call downward i think it's actually

technically downward arrow questioning where

we try to logically talk ourselves out of these you know

kind of anxiety provoking situations like okay well

there are 700 people in the cafeteria today

what are the chances of that person laughing

is laughing about us, well 1 in 700, well is that really

you know a high risk situation? is it most likely that they're

thinking and laughing about me or is it less likely that they're

thinking and laughing at me? well it's probably less likely

and we kind of talk ourselves out of it

so if you suffer from social anxiety or social phobia

and you're wondering what to do about it

i would look into seeing a CBT therapist okay?

so that's just a little tip and then

what is agoraphobia everybody talks about that too, right?

and that falls under this as well now agoraphobia

differs from social anxiety or social phobia in that

it doesn't have to do with social situations

it's not relational it's not like well that girl is pointing at me

and she's being really mean or that guy was whispering

and i know he was whispering about me it's not relational

with those kinds of people it is all to do with us getting into

a situation which usually is social or is just out of our house

out of our comfort zone so we may be safe at home

we may be safe at work anything else not safe

and our main concern is that we'll get somewhere and

we can't leave either we can't leave easily

or without embarrassment and that's our biggest worry

it's like i'm gonna get somewhere and i'm gonna start to

feel overwhelmed and then i won't be able to leave

or i'll have to embarrass myself in front of people to leave

because i'll be stuck you know like i'm in the middle seat

in this opera and i'm gonna have to get up and disturb

all these people it's gonna be really embarrassing for me

so that's kind of more what agoraphobia is versus

social anxiety so social anxiety is more relational

agoraphobia is just like situational if that makes sense

that's kind of in my mind how if i had my white board

i would draw a line and i would break them down like that

so that is that then there are panic attacks and panic disorder

now panic attacks i know many of you have said that

you've had them and that you have them a lot

and they're really overwhelming and that's the truth

they really suck and they're terrible and they not only

come on quickly but once we have them

then we always worry that we're going to

have more of them and the symptoms of panic attacks

can be they say somatic or cognitive in nature so it can be

like heart palpitations i can be sweating i can be trembling

i can be shaking the most common thing i hear

in my practice is i feel like i'm drowning and i think that's

because we have those heart palpitations and we

don't breathe very well and we feel like we're drowning

and so these will happen usually in ten minutes or less

and you can have a panic attack but only if

and i want to make sure i say this correctly

only if we have recurrent and unexpected panic attacks

followed by at least a month of worry that we're going to

have another do we have panic disorder okay?

so that's how those differentiate because

panic attacks can happen and some of us with

generalized anxiety disorder may have a panic attack

every once in a while when we're put in a really

stressful situation but unless we have them recurrent

and we worry about them all the time we don't have

panic disorder we would have generalized anxiety disorder

or agoraphobia with panic attacks okay? so that's how

those are differentiated and just to give you an idea

of how many other things are included under anxiety

disorders we have panic disorder without agoraphobia

panic disorder with agoraphobia so you can see how

all of these can be attached on to one another

with or without so that's why i just gave you you know

those most common and what i hear most from you and

what you wanted me to talk about so that is

an umbrella view in the most common panic related

and anxiety related disorders and different attacks

that we can have okay? so now what the heck do we do?

well the first thing is i would definitely see a therapist

and i would also look into seeing your doctor your gp or

your psychiatrist because of the physical things that can

come up when we have anxiety and we want to make sure

that not only that our physical health is under control

and managed but we also want to make sure that

our anxiety isn't causing any damage to anything

i mean i've had a client who had a little heart valve issue

because of all the panic attacks and the breathing

and i mean she had a predisposition to that before

but you just want to make sure that everything is okay

and that these aren't being caused by a medical condition

and that's really important that's something that i don't think

i mention enough is when we think we have a certain

mental disorder that's why we need to go to our

primary care doctor always because we want to make sure

that it can't be attributed to something else because a lot

of people will diagnose us and they'll be wrong

and it's not because they're not good clinicians

there's just a lot to factor in and i want to make sure that

we know that this is not being caused by something else

and if we cannot get these things under control

and our panic attacks potentially are making school

really hard or we could potentially lose our job

and things like that we want to make sure that if

we need medication they can give us that and

they can help us out and a CBT therapist

or just a regular talk therapist can really really help

as we figure out where this came from why we're doing it

and we can kind of talk ourselves out like i talked

that downward arrow questioning and it can sometimes

help us out of that so make sure to take a look at that

don't forget to subscribe to my channel cuz i will do a video

on OCD that will be coming up really soon so stay tuned

for that and like i said i already did a video on PTSD

and i've done some videos on anxiety 101 and

breathing techniques cus those can help sometimes

when we feel our anxiety building and so i would take a look

at those and check those out and don't forget to leave

your comments below i know many of you so many of you

struggle with this and you've asked me to do this video

so please leave your comments if there are other things

you want me to talk about if you have tips and tricks

and things that work for you please share them

oru community is amazing and it's growing and you're all

helping each other and i love to watch it to be honest

it's very exciting so keep working with me

keep helping one another

as we work towards a healthy mind and a healthy body

okay good yeah i'm overheating

overheating

if i was like a little thermometer i'd be like {boop}

the little steam would be coming out and the little

red light would be flashing okay time to get outside

do something fun yeah yeah

maybe get a tan because i am like a ghost yeah