Anxiety is a simple and very common reaction to stress and inconveniences. Its commonness is what makes it especially dangerous. Anxiety can be triggered by multiple factors such as fear, worry, uncertainty, nervous feeling, and denial among others. Anxiety as a disorder becomes overwhelming and starts preventing an individual from living a full life. Anxiety diorder is a basis for a large variety of other mental and psychological problems such as impulse control disorders, eating disorders or depressive syndrome.
It can increase morbidity among the patients causing suicides. Moreover, anxiety disorders prevent the affected individuals from social interactions making them avoid close contact with other people including the therapists. The danger the disorders of this kind represent is the reason why thousands of researchers all over the world are trying to find a successful treatment for them.
Composing my papers about anxiety disorders I focused on anxiety disorders in general, anxiety disorders in the United States and anxiety disorders in women. Working on my reports I have located ten different scholarly sources that helped me collect the information, synthesize and analyze it. The articles by Hoffman and Smits and by Shear, Cloitre, Pine and Ross provided detailed information about the rates of anxiety disorders in the United States and their impacts.
I agree with these sources and the way they present anxiety disorders in order to inform the readers about the seriousness of the issue. The work by Olatunji, Cisler and Tolin presents a detailed description of the effect anxiety disorders produce on the quality of life of the affected individuals. I fully agree with this description because anxiety disorders turn all-consuming very quickly and start to affect the individuals’ social, professional, and personal life.
Moreover, I agree with the work by Cuijpers and Schuumans which states that one of the main obstacles preventing the people suffering from anxiety disorders from getting proper treatment is the cost of the therapy. The services of professional therapists are very pricy, so even if an individual has time and space to overcome their anxiety disorder, they might be unable to afford it. “Advances in Child and Adolescent Anxiety Disorder Research” mentions that in some cases anxiety disorders may run in the families.
In my opinion, this claim is slightly unclear. The authors of the research do not explain whether the disorders can be passed genetically or they are somehow infectious. I think it is meant that the disorders are flawed reactions and coping mechanisms, so if a parent has an anxiety disorder it can be observed and copied by children.
Finally, one of the claims that impressed me personally was made by Shear, Cloitre, Pine and Ross in their version of an explanation of the fact that women are more frequent anxiety disorder patients than men. The researchers noticed that the symptoms of anxiety in female children and adolescents can be overlooked due to the stereotypical gender expectations. In other words, girls are expected to be shy, fearful and nervous. The same behaviors in boys would be viewed as suspicious.
Overall, the information I found in the ten sources reviewed for the reports was valuable. I agree with every source and support most of the claims made by them. The sources did not contradict one another or provide questionable data; they were reliable and extremely helpful for my research.