Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)
Learn about generalized anxiety disorder and common treatments ...
Telling someone with generalized anxiety disorder to stop worrying has little to no effect, except, ironically, to possibly exacerbate the individual’s anxiety even more.
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Why? Because generalized anxiety disorder, or GAD, a mental health disorder characterized by extreme or exaggerated worry, requires the expertise and treatment of mental health professionals (see Anxiety Counseling). It’s not a condition that individuals can mediate or change by themselves. It’s a medical condition just as diabetes or heart disease is a medical condition.
Doctors don’t tell diabetic individuals to simply stop having diabetes, or someone with heart disease to cease having blocked arteries. Instead, doctors prescribe medically tested and effective treatments and therapeutic interventions to treat these conditions.
In the same way, counselors and therapists use interventions and medications to treat GAD.
According to the Mental Health America website, GAD is a chronic condition that includes hyper-focusing on worry everyday, a type of focus that affects the tasks and activities of everyday living. This type of excessive worrying lasts at least six months, and most likely reoccurs throughout in individual’s life.
Physical symptoms that often accompany GAD are fatigue, muscle aches and tension, headaches, nausea, and trembling.
GAD is one six types of anxiety disorders. The other five types are post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), social anxiety disorder, panic disorder, and specific phobias.
GAD and Nervous Nellie
Our society and culture has labeled those who appear to worry a lot with a variety of names, such as “worry warts,” “neurotics,” and “nervous Nellies.” But what differentiates an excitable or “nervous” personality type from one who suffers with GAD?
All of us experience anxiety and worry, from worrying about doing well in our careers, to worry about our finances, and our children’s health. In normal situations, worry is healthy. It helps motivate us to keep our job skills current, spend less money in order to save more, and take our children to the doctor when they don’t feel well.
A person with GAD worries beyond what situations and conditions warrant. Examples would be a parent who won’t let a child attend any social events for fear of catching a cold, or worrying continuously that the child will become ill with a life-threatening disease or illness. This type of worry prevents the parent from enjoying his or her child, and also prevents the child from learning how to interact socially with other children. (see Childhood Developmental Psychology).
GAD keeps individuals from any type of travel, fearing accidents, natural disasters, sickness, or a host of other reasons.
People with GAD aren’t ever without worry or tension over something. Sometimes individuals don’t have a particular worry over something specific, but still feel anxious and upset in general. Those with GAD often report they can hardly recall a time when they felt fully relaxed, according to the Mayo Clinic’s website, MayoClinic.com.
A lifetime with GAD
Anxiety in Children
Imagination in childhood is at its highest, and many of us only wish to go back and recapture a fragment of our imaginative minds at our earliest developmental stages. But for kids with an anxiety disorder, the combination of wild imaginations and anxiety causes equally wild and uncontrollable amounts of fear and resulting anxiety.
This anxiety disorder occurs at any time during a person’s life, but the Mayo website states that it often first occurs at an early age.
The earlier GAD is diagnosed and treated, the better the individual is at managing it, and living without letting the disorder affect normal daily functioning. While there isn’t a cure for the disorder, early treatment and intervention helps individuals learn to cope with and better manage the disorder.
Two types of treatments are available for GAD: psychotherapy and medications. Psychotherapy usually involves a cognitive behavioral approach, a treatment that focuses on changing how individuals form thoughts and behaviors around all aspects of their lives. (see article on Anxiety Treatments.)
Several proven medications also are used for treating GAD, most effectively paired with psychotherapy. Some of these medications are short-term only to help individuals get relief immediately for intense periods of anxiety. Others are taken daily for long-term management of the disorder.
If you desire to help individuals successfully manage GAD or any of the other anxiety or mental health disorders, consider a career as a mental health professional. Most states require a master’s degree in mental health counseling to work as a counselor.
Most states also require a license to practice, requiring the taking of a state exam. Other requirements for licensing will depend on the mental health counseling specialty and work setting.
For more information on working in field of Mental Health Counseling, request information from the schools offering degree programs in mental health counseling or a related counseling degree program.