Major Psychological Disorder> Anxiety Disorders - Symptoms of Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety triggers when your body's "fight-or-flight" response fires without real danger—like a smoke alarm beeping at burnt toast. It shows in physical and psychological symptoms.

Panic disorder is characterized by a sudden attack of unexplainable terror like fear for spider, rat or cockroaches.

Panic is anxiety at its peak—a bolt of terror from nowhere, disproportionate to any threat. Peaks in minutes, lasts hours; often linked to agoraphobia (fear of open/crowded spots).

Core Features:

• Irrational panic (e.g., terror from a spider, a rat, a hair bunch, or an imagined injury like a dancer's leg amputation).
• Physical pain, screaming, restlessness.
• Unlike generalised anxiety (constant), panic strikes suddenly.

Causes:

• Genetics: 50% have a family history.
• Brain: Locus Coeruleus (LC) overactivity (PET scans confirm).

A phobia is a morbid or pathological fear which the patient realizes to be absurd but nevertheless is unable to explain and overcome it.

Phobia: Morbid dread of harmless objects/situations you know are safe but can't avoid—like fearing a shadow puppet spider. Intense, paralysing; interferes with life.

It refers to excessive fear of situations in which a person might be evaluated and perhaps embarrassed.

• Anxiety is the body’s fight-or-flight response without real danger, causing physical and psychological symptoms.
• Common symptoms include sweating, rapid heartbeat, dizziness, worry, tension, and poor concentration.
• Panic disorder involves sudden, intense fear attacks with breathlessness and fear of dying or losing control.
• A phobia is an irrational and persistent fear of harmless objects or situations that interferes with daily life.
• Normal fear is logical and manageable, but a phobia is paralysing and uncontrollable.