Anxiety Disorders refers to the category of disorders that includes things you might expect like phobias, panic attacks, and post-traumatic stress disorder. It also includes obsessive-compulsive disorder, something people don’t always associate with anxiety. All of these disorders have in common a feeling of nervousness that bothers a person both physically and mentally.
Anxiety disorders are often quite biological in nature. That is, they are frequently inherited. However, discovering the root of anxiety disorders is complicated by the fact that anxious parents might pass along anxiety genetically, and they may also pass it on by modeling nervous behavior that the kids simply copy. Many children of anxious parents get a powerful double-dose of anxiety and can hardly help but be a bit edgy.
Given that anxiety can often be largely biological, it would make sense to treat it very medically, by using medication. The problem with that is that the most effective medications to treat anxiety are highly addictive and have street value (that is, you could make money selling them). Other medications that are safer often do not have as strong an effect on the anxiety and people tend to stop taking them because they don’t work all that well. At Down To Earth, our preference is to treat anxiety disorders with as much therapy and as little medication as is possible, but if medication really looks like the only answer for any relief, a referral will be made to a psychiatrist.
