General anxiety disorder is a form of anxiety disorder that is encompassed by excessive and uncontrollable as well as irrational worry. Excessive worry infers with the day to day functioning of an individual with such disturbances. A person with this kind of disorder always anticipates for disaster in any activity he indulges in. They are as well much concerned about everyday matters such as health, money, death or even family and friendship issues. The disorder is characterized by certain physical symptoms such as a headache, nausea, numbness and tension (Lader, 2015). In the United States, general anxiety disorder acts as the leading cause of disability in the workplaces. General anxiety disorder in an individual can be caused by genetics, people with genetic predisposition acquires general anxiety disorder much easily. The disorder can also be substance induced; this is the most common cause of general anxiety disorder. In this regard, this paper addresses the diagnostic criteria, prevalence, comorbidity as well as the treatment options.
Diagnostic criteria
There are two major forms of diagnostic criteria for the general anxiety disorder. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders DSM-5 is one of the diagnostic criteria. DSM-5 criteria include//; excessive anxiety and worry occur more days than normal for at least six months involving some events and activities. The individual finds it difficult to control the worry. Furthermore, the anxiety and worry cause’ clinically significant distress impairment in the social, occupational and other areas of social functioning. The second criteria are the ICD-10 (Lader, 2015). The ICD-10 criteria include a period of at least six months involving prominent tension, feeling of apprehension, worry concerning everyday problems, activities, and events. The criteria are as well associated with either, autonomic arousal symptom or symptoms concerning the abdomen and chest or symptoms related to brain and mind or symptoms of tension and general symptoms.
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Prevalence
General anxiety disorder is a common type of disorder in the primary health care. Twenty toe percent of the primary health care patients always complain of the anxiety problems. General anxiety disorder has a high prevalence rate in the main consideration amounting to 8 per cent of the total number. In the general population, the prevalence is a bit lower ranging between 1.9-5.1 percent (Lader, 2015). The statement illustrates that general anxiety disorder patients are the most users of the primary care resources. General anxiety disorder is more prevalent among women than men. However, the prevalence is much higher among the middle life and the older subject but lower among the adolescents. Therefore, is is evident that most people who are susceptible to contract this kind of disorder are majorly the middle-aged people. Appropriate treatment measures should be incorporated into the average lives to reduce the prevalence rates.
Comorbidity
Comorbidity is a subject in generalized anxiety disorder that increases practical and theoretical importance. Researchers have found out that comorbid disorders are very common among persons with GAD, and there are yet to established whether it is an independent disorder or prodrome, residual, or severity marker for other depressive disorders or anxiety. Generalized anxiety disorder has not spread widely thus exist in a significant minority of people. The rates of comorbidity in GAD are high for other anxiety disorder such as: depressive disorder, panic disorder, and dysthymia and major depressive disorder. Patients with comorbidity do not respond well to treatment thus in the end they have a worse outcome. According to Noyes (2001), comorbidity patients are those that have co-occuring medical illness. He added that high rates of co-occurance mean that diagnostic categories are not well defined. However, relationship between categories and other variables are majorly caused by comorbidity. Researchers’ view extensive comorbidity as a way to provide a causal relationship which influence treatment response and outcome. On the other hand, classification system influences the rates of comorbidty in several ways. For example, the splitting of disorders rather than lumping them tends to increase the rates of comorbidity. Diagnostic thresholds also influence comorbidity rates. For instance, when the thresholds are lowered, the prevalence of the disorder tends to increase while the rate of comorbidity decreases.
Treatment options
There are two main treatments of GAD. They include: psychotherapy and medications. Pyschoherapy is whereby a patient goes for a psychological counseling and works with a therapist in order to reduce anxiety symptoms. The most effective forms of psychotherapy for GAD are cognitive behavioral therapy. There are several types of medication that are used to treat GAD. Success of treatment varies depending with the patients. Some may respond to treatment after a few weeks or months, while others need more that a year. Different anxiety disorders have different medication regimens. Some of the drugs are preventive and some are designed to cure the problem. Antidepressants such as serotonin reuptake inhibitors are majorly used to treat and prevent a variety of anxiety disorders. Examples include: Zoloft, Prozac, Paxil, Celexa, and Lexapro. The Cymbalta and antidepressants Effexor are also effective in treating GAD. Antihistamines and beta-blockers are also effective in mild cases of anxiety as well as performance anxiety. There are categorized as a social anxiety disorders. These types of medicines should be taken daily as prescribed by the physicians. For patients who have acute anxiety, they need to take an anti-anxiety medicine. There are categorized as benzodiazepines; among them Valium, Ativan, Xanax, Librium, and Klonopin. This type of drugs sometimes causes irritability, drowsiness, dizziness, attention problems, and physical dependence (Jeste, 2013).
References
Jeste, D. (2013). Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5th Edition . American Psychiatric Publishing: Washington Dc.
Noyes, R. (2001). Comorbidity in generalized anxiety disorder. Psychiatric Clinics of North America , 24 (1), 41-55.
Lader, M. (2015). Generalized anxiety disorder. In Encyclopedia of Psychopharmacology (pp. 699-702). Springer Berlin Heidelberg.
