Anxiety is a common mental health problem in The United States. Here are some statistics about the prevalence of anxiety from the WHO (World Health Organization.)
Anxiety disorders are the most common psychiatric disorders.
According to epidemiological surveys, one third of the population will experience an anxiety disorder during their lifetime.
Anxiety disorders are more common in women.
During midlife, the prevalence of anxiety disorders is highest.
The percentage of adults who have mild, moderate, or severe symptoms of anxiety is highest among those aged 18–29 and decreases with age.
Women are more likely to experience mild, moderate, or severe symptoms of anxiety than men.
In the U.S., SAD (social anxiety disorder) affects 15 million adults or 7.1% of the population.
An estimated 19.1% of U.S. adults have had any anxiety disorder in the past year.
There are quite a few different disease states and many different treatment regimens. There are several different diagnoses associated with anxiety.
Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD): Characterized with chronic worry, expecting something negative to happen, feeling on edge and restlessness, easily fatigued and difficulty concentrating. Sometimes this leads to anxiety attacks where the anxiety progresses to an almost panic level of anxiety.
Panic disorder (PD): is a discreet period of severe anxiety with physiological symptoms usually spontaneously developing and characterized by impending sense of doom and death. Often people will have chest pain, shortness of breath, irregular heartbeat and this can often be misinterpreted as a heart attack.
PTSD (Post traumatic stress disorder) PTSD is characterized by 4 groups of symptoms: intrusion symptoms, avoidance, negative alterations in cognition and mood, and alterations in arousal and reactivity. These symptoms are a reaction to a traumatic event.
Social anxiety disorder is when people have anxiety when interacting with others or when being around too many people. The symptoms are feelings of being watched and or judged. Also, known as social phobia.
OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) is characterized by intrusive thoughts, flashbacks, nightmares about the traumatic event, and
CBT treatments for anxiety
Most CBT techniques are not disease specific, and have shown lasting improvements up to 12 months in PTSD,, GAD and SAD. PD did not show lasting effect when studies were analyzed, and OCD and specific phobias only had 6 month follow up’s, both of which showed lasting improvement in the research by Van Dis et al. found at https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6902232/. While these tools are not disease specific some are better for certain disorders.
Given that these are lasting effects it seems like CBT should be a first line treatment for Anxiety disorders and in fact it is. Usually, CBT is best used when combined with medications.
Selected CBT techniques include cognitive (thought ) restructuring, worry history outcome , mental spotlight, worry free zone, worry timetabling, positive data log, and positive outcome imagery.
Cognitive restructuring is the process of changing negative thinking patterns. It’s a deep dive into what triggers your anxiety and identifying the negative thoughts associated with it. Learning how to change those thought processes is extremely powerful.
A worry history outcome involves logging your worries and tracking the actual outcomes. This helps you to understand that your fears do not manifest as often as you think they well.
Mental Spotlight is the process of focusing your attention on something other than your fears. It’s simplest form is distraction. The process of shifting thoughts away from worries is difficult and takes effort as well as fortitude. The outcome of good Mental spotlight is the ability to overcome your brain's hardwired need to focus on threats.
Worry-free zone a place, or worry free time, or a designated area all can be worry free zones. These help you shift your attention away from perceived threats.
Worry timetabling involves setting aside a specific time to worry. As with mental spotlight and worry free zone it helps your brain develop the ability to not focus on worrisome thoughts.
Positive data log is a journal of your fears and worries, with the actual outcomes, the longer you do the data log, the more you come to realize worry and reality of often very disconnected.
Finally, positive outcome imagery, most who worry, will spend a lot of their time imagining the worst possible outcomes of any given situation. Positive outcome imagery helps to change those images and interrupts the catastrophic thinking by taking the worrisome thought and playing it out in your mind with a more hopeful ending.
These techniques can be used by you throughout your life giving your control over your anxiety.
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