Psychological Disorders (Essay Sample)

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Anxiety disorders
Anxiety is considered as normal to human emotion, and everyone experiences it at times. Most people feel nervous or anxious, while experiencing problems at work, before decision-making or before a test taking. Some common anxiety features include; sweating, increased heart rate, dry mouth and rapid breathing. Moderate anxiety for most people is normal but longstanding, and intense anxiety is considered harmful as it disrupts daily functioning of a person. However, anxiety disorders are different, and they are considered to be serious mental illnesses. They may cause distress hence interfering with human ability to lead a normal life. For persons with anxiety disorders, fear and worry are overwhelming and constant, and can be crippling.
Anxiety disorders include; phobia, obsessive –compulsive disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, and panic disorder. A phobia can be described as persistent fear of a situation or an object that the sufferer try to avoid even if it is not harmful or dangerous. The efforts to avoid events and some objects greatly interfere with their life daily. A phobia can be further classified as social phobia, agoraphobia and specific phobia. Social phobia involves, feeling anxious about being criticized or acting in a humiliating and embarrassing way among people. For example, fear of speaking publically or having meals in front of others. Specific phobias are caused by specific situations and stimuli. For example, heights, animals, blood and air travels fear, etc. On the other hand, agoraphobia is fear of situations or places that one may perceive as dangerous environments far from a safe area.
Generalized Anxiety Disorder is a long-lasting anxiety not focussed on particular situation or object. Inability to concentrate, fatigue, anxiousness and failing to sleep soundly are some of the characteristics seen in a person suffering this disorder. The panic disorder causes sudden terror feeling, even when there is no real danger possibility. Panic attacks happen anywhere, anytime and with no warnings and this fear may lead some people not to leave their homes. Physical symptoms experienced include: breathing difficulty, sweating, weakness, fast heartbeats, and Chest or stomach pain among others. Obsessive-compulsive Disorder is characterized by obsessions and unreasonable unwanted thoughts leading to repetitive behaviours. It is associated with dysfunction of the brain. For example, fear of germs contamination may lead a person to wash compulsively their hands until they become chapped and sore in order to ease contamination fears. We can conclude that Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder is centred around themes, despite trying to ignore bothersome thoughts, the urges or thoughts keep coming hence leading to ritualistic behaviour.
Some factors that contribute to anxiety disorders includes psychological, biological and social factors. Individuals develop the anxiety disorder on possessing both psychological and biological "vulnerabilities”, coupled with a social environment. In most of the families, anxiety disorders are mainly caused by biological factors. Obsessive –Compulsive Disorder is related to family history whereby genetic traits are passed from one member of a family to another. For example, genetic predisposition influences anxiety disorders that may affect identical twins.
Psychological factors are feelings and thoughts that affect attitude and behaviour of a human mind. Environmental stressors cause post-traumatic stress disorder that are reflected by the increasing number of terror attacks and natural disasters. Social anxiety in children may be promoted by parents who influence their children to view social situations as threatening. Furthermore, children ability in dealing with events that are threatening is underestimated thus desperation, and anxiety is triggered once feared events occur. Some of the phobia disorders come about through observational learning. For example, hearing about other people’s bad experience or observing can bring about fear. A dog attack intensifies the fear of dogs, and a person would try the best to...