Overview of Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD)

The report brings about the discussion on the topic, ‘Generalized Anxiety disorder’, and the aspects related. Generalized anxiety disorder is one of the most common health issues within every country in the individuals. The disorder is associated to be the result of various factors, and impacts which will be discussed in the later part of the report.

Generalized Anxiety disorder (GAD) refers to an anxiety disorder which is related with certain characteristics of excessive, uncontrollable tenseness about any event or activities. Physical symptoms often accompany as individuals such as tiredness, headaches, numbness in hands, irritability, difficulties in concentration, breathing problems and several others. GAD affects the quality of life of an individual in every aspect including social, family, school, and work (Stein & Sareen, 2015).

It has been found that the issue of anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness; across several countries, approximately 40 million populations have been affected by the anxiety disorder in United States. Moreover, the disorder is differently prevalent across various gender, ethnic, and social groups. In the U.S. adults affected with GAD, their condition ranged from mild to serious in the previous year. Prevalence and incidence of the disorder is higher in women (3%) than man (1.5%) (Baxter et al., 2014).

(Source: National Institute of Mental Health, 2018)

The graph above has represented about the prevalence of the depressive episode in 2015, in context to the mental health issue of GAD, during different age-groups amongst diverse population in the U.S. 

The diagram below depicts the high prevalence of the anxiety disorder among adults, during their onset of childhood, and in the later period of life.

 Source: (Anxiety, Panic and health, 2018)

Anxiety disorder, as a common public health issue is caused due to several reasons or factors such as genetic or substance-induced. Genes or the family history has been found as the one of the common causes of the generalized anxiety disorder. In addition to the genes, or family history, there are some other causes such as stressful situations, occurring due to family illness or personal health issue, leads to GAD. Substance induced causes include person with excessive use of tobacco, alcohol, or caffeine; also termed as risk factors causing anxiety (Bandelow & Michaelis, 2015).  

Anxiety disorder leads to increases healthcare costs, and hamper the economic growth of the nation. GAD-related medications and the therapies provided to the patients in the hospitals often leads to an increase in the costs of the health cares. As it has been also found that in U.S people with the disorder have decreased productivity, and there has been a constant rise in the economic burden (Berger et al., 2011).

Prevalence/ Magnitude of GAD

The pie-chart above has stated well about the consequences of the anxiety disorder in the population of United States. It has been represented that 30% of the adult population has been suffering from the issue of anxiety disorder in North America, which has affected their state of wellbeing. In addition, the percent of population who will receive treatment is only one third which is a very less number.

To discover what has been done till to address the public health issue of GAD, it has been found that there has been pharmacological treatments used already to treat anxiety disorders in individuals. Anxiety management therapies involve education, relaxation training, and the exposure to the individual which helps the person in overcoming the fears or unnecessary tension for anything (Cuijpers et al., 2016). Cognitive behavioural therapies (CBT) or cognitive restructuring is one of the techniques which have been used by the communities and health organisations where at first the expert or the therapist first identifies all the thoughts which make the person afraid, in those anxiety-provoking situations (Bystritsky et al., 2013). 

Afterwards, the therapist or expert tells the person verbally to involve himself in some alternative thoughts which would be a rational response in those fear-provoking situations. In this way, the person will gain confidence to deal with such situations patiently, and gradually he will be able to deal with the disorder in an effective manner (Herzig-Anderson et al., 2012). 

Behavioural psychotherapies are widely used for treating anxiety disorders, and self-exposure treatment requires that professionals make the anxious patient deliberately involved in the fear provoking situations, to make him come out of the trauma. According to the aspects of the socio-ecological model in context to the anxiety disorder, there has been contribution of several healthcare organisations, individuals, families in supporting the people facing the problem of anxiety disorder. The patients or individuals found to be dealing with the anxiety disorder are provided with the doctors or the therapists social skills training, which helps them to improve their social interaction with people. An assumption has been analysed based on this technique that people are anxious in the social situations partly because these people lack in the behaviour or skills required to interact socially within the community (Salihu et al., 2015). 

Anxiety disorder has been major public health issue across different regions and countries, which requires to be treated effectively timely. Thus, there can be certain suggestions or recommendations in context to the generalized anxiety disorder. These suggestions include that the families or other members must provide support or help to the patients, and develop an open and healthy relationship with them. They must engage in exploring the reasons of the worries efficiently, and develop an intervention to deal with them. In addition, they should perform the responsibility by providing the patient, information regarding the available local and self-help organisations which would help them to deal and recover from this order. As per the above discussion disclosed about what has been done or the programs which has been already implemented. The strategies or programs implemented include assessment of the stressful situations, symptoms, effect of the programs on the person or the society (Khoury et al., 2015). 

Causes /Factors leading to GAD

There have been certain gaps in the structuring of the problems, and dealing with the disorder, which mainly includes the gap of education to the people from low or poor background in the society; as they are unable to get access to better health, and the facilities of therapists. Gaps in the treatment or medications provided to the people from rural areas were one of the major issues. From the above description about the causes, consequences, and what has been already done the gaps were found in the planning activities undertaken by healthcare organisations; as they focused only on the urban population while people from rural areas were neglected. Due to ineffective planning and inactive behaviour of health professional’s people continued to be affected by anxiety disorder. Thus, the research findings has stated about things which were done, and the interventions which were taken by people, i.e. health professionals and the people/patients within society. However, there has been no discussion about the ways to increase accessibility to the health services, and reducing the treatment gap between the individual patients from both rural and urban areas in the community.

Future intervention which can be applied in the cases of anxiety disorders may include identifying the components of PHC (primary health care) at first, and then accomplishing the goals to deal with anxiety disorder patients. The program before implementation will include a survey to be conducted in every community which consist of the activities of screening of  individuals found with the disorder. I will conduct a survey and select individuals found with disorder, and then assure them with effective medications and therapies on a regular basis. Therefore, I will lead to the last step of evaluation of the program by taking a feedback from those patients weekly so that they can suggest any further changes if any required in the program.

Conclusion

To conclude the above discussion it has been analysed that the issue of generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is widely prevalent in all the communities amongst individuals at every age.  The fact sheet above discussed about the causes, consequences on the person’s health and the interventions or suggestions which would help people to deal with their anxiety or mental health illness.

References

Anxiety Centre. (2018). Anxiety effects on Society Statistics. Retrieved from: https://www.anxietycentre.com/anxiety-statistics-information.shtml

Anxiety, Panic & Health. (2018). Adult separation Anxiety Disorder. Retrieved from: https://anxietypanichealth.com/reference/separation-anxiety-disorder-adult/

Bandelow, B. & Michaelis, S. (2015). Epidemiology of anxiety disorders in the 21st century. Dialogues in clinical neuroscience, 17(3), 327.

Baxter, A. J., Vos, T., Scott, K. M., Ferrari, A. J.  & Whiteford, H. A. (2014). The global burden of anxiety disorders in 2010. Psychological medicine, 44(11), 2363-2374.

Berger, A., Edelsberg, J., Bollu, V., Alvir, J. M. J., Dugar, A., Joshi, A. V. & Oster, G. (2011). Healthcare utilization and costs in patients beginning pharmacotherapy for generalized anxiety disorder: a retrospective cohort study. BMC psychiatry,  11(1), 193.

Bystritsky, A., Khalsa, S. S., Cameron, M. E. & Schiffman, J. (2013). Current diagnosis and treatment of anxiety disorders. Pharmacy and Therapeutics, 38(1), 30.

Cuijpers, P., Cristea, I. A., Karyotaki, E., Reijnders, M. & Huibers, M. J. (2016). How effective are cognitive behaviour therapies for major depression and anxiety disorders? A meta?analytic update of the evidence. World Psychiatry, 15(3), 245-258.

Herzig-Anderson, K., Colognori, D., Fox, J. K., Stewart, C. E. & Warner, C. M. (2012). School-based anxiety treatments for children and adolescents. Child and Adolescent Psychiatric Clinics, 21(3), 655-668.

Khoury, B., Sharma, M., Rush, S. E. & Fournier, C. (2015). Mindfulness-based stress reduction for healthy individuals: a meta-analysis. Journal of psychosomatic research, 78(6), 519-528.

National Institute of Mental Health. (2018). Major Depression in Adults. Retrieved from: https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/statistics/prevalence/major-depression-among-adults.shtml/index.shtml

Salihu, H. M., Wilson, R. E., King, L. M., Marty, P. J. & Whiteman, V. E. (2015). Socio-ecological model as a framework for overcoming barriers and challenges in randomized control trials in minority and underserved communities. International Journal of MCH and AIDS, 3(1), 85.

Stein, M. B. & Sareen, J. (2015). Generalized anxiety disorder. New England Journal of Medicine, 373(21), 2059-2068.