Are all anxiety disorders treated with the same treatment?
Posted on Oct 25, 2008 under anxiety disorders |I’m doing a research paper on the five main types of anxiety disorders, Obsessive-Compulsive, Post-Traumatic Stress, Panic, Social Anxiety, and Generalized Anxiety. Are all of these disorders treated with cognitive-behavioral therapy and SSRI’s? I was wanting to be able to sum up the treatment in one paragraph at the end rather than dedicating a paragraph about treatment to each disorder. Thanks in advance. [:
Not all, because different people may react differently to medication. Doctors are trying to find the minimum effective dose, with the medication with the least side effects. If SSRI does not help they have to switch to a more serious medication, with perhaps more severe side effects.
Many medications originally approved for the treatment of depression have been found to relieve symptoms of anxiety. These include certain SSRIs, tricyclic antidepressants, MAOIs, and the newer atypical antidepressants.
Antidepressants are often preferred over the traditional anti-anxiety drugs because the risk for dependency and abuse is smaller. However, antidepressants take up to 4 to 6 weeks to begin relieving anxiety symptoms, so they can’t be taken “as needed.” For example, antidepressants wouldn’t help at all if you waited until you were having a panic attack to take them. Their use is limited to chronic anxiety problems that require ongoing treatment.
The antidepressants most widely prescribed for anxiety are the SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors).
October 18th, 2008 at 4:06 pm
it varies. i have GAD and social anxiety. cognitive therapy helped soo much more then meds did. so im pretty sure that ssris and therapy treat all of the main types of anxiety in one way or another. i have to take meds for my social anxiety, but definitly still go to my cognitive therapist.
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October 18th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
no there are as many different treatments for that as there are ppl with it. different combinations. some with meds some not. talk to your doc and find out.
References :
October 18th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
For the most part, yes, but through studies they’re realized that a combination of cognitive/behavioral therapy and medications is the most successful route to take. So usually psychotherapy and meds are used, and it depends on the person and the disorder what combination of the two works.
References :
Took college psychology course
October 18th, 2008 at 4:14 pm
Not all, because different people may react differently to medication. Doctors are trying to find the minimum effective dose, with the medication with the least side effects. If SSRI does not help they have to switch to a more serious medication, with perhaps more severe side effects.
Many medications originally approved for the treatment of depression have been found to relieve symptoms of anxiety. These include certain SSRIs, tricyclic antidepressants, MAOIs, and the newer atypical antidepressants.
Antidepressants are often preferred over the traditional anti-anxiety drugs because the risk for dependency and abuse is smaller. However, antidepressants take up to 4 to 6 weeks to begin relieving anxiety symptoms, so they can’t be taken “as needed.” For example, antidepressants wouldn’t help at all if you waited until you were having a panic attack to take them. Their use is limited to chronic anxiety problems that require ongoing treatment.
The antidepressants most widely prescribed for anxiety are the SSRIs (selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors).
References :
October 18th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
Negative emotions (like sadness, stress, anger, etc.) causes your Serotonin production to be low; when your Serotonin level is low, you are more prone to getting Anxiety, Panic Attacks, Depression, etc.
Medication like Antidepressants (SSRI - Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitor) helps to boost Serotonin level.
But there are natural ways to do it without medication. There’s this strange herb called “St John’s Wort” - it is said to be more effective than Prozac. No, it is not for mild depression only and ignore those sayings. In fact, it does help anxiety and panic-attacks as St John’s Wort works like prozac. Other natural ways will be exercise, diet, more exposure to light, etc.
The problem is that, even if your Serotonin is balanced… you have that “learned behavior” in your mind. You need to break that initial cycle to destroy that learned behavior - Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) does this. A technique that you can use without CBT will be Distraction… There are several other techniques to help cope them!
Ok, to use Distraction: Firstly, try to….
Extracted from Source.
References :
http://PanicAttackResearch.blogspot.com