Courtney Richtman (FGCU): Anxiety Disorders

According to the National Institution of Mental Health, 57.7 million people ages 18 and up suffer from mental disorders in America.  However, only about six percent of these people suffer from serious mental illness.   Here is a list of people with mental disorders in the U.S. according to the NIMH:

Mood disorders: 20.9 million American adults

Major Depressive disorder: 14.8 million American adults

Bipolar Disorder: 5.7 million American adults

Schizophrenia: 2.4 million American adults

anxiety Disorders: 40 million American adults

And that is not even half of the mental disorders that are out there.  Can you imagine having to live like some of these people? Let’s look at anxiety disorders.  Most people assume that everybody has a form of anxiety sometime in there lives.  Well that may be true, many don’t realize what people with generalized anxiety have to go through.  With this disorder, you literally have to deal with anxiety twenty four seven.  They always have high levels of anxiety that isn’t specifically tied to anything and happens all time.  They deal with symptoms such as trembling, muscle tension, faintness, heart palpitations, sweating, and diarrhea.  We as college students  deal with some level of anxiety and stress when worrying about exams, school, family problems, etc. and can barely handle it.  Yet that doesn’t even come close to anywhere near what people with anxiety disorder have to deal with.  Imagine feeling like you do during stressful times but at an even worse level ALL THE TIME.  Some people with this disorder do not even come outside their own homes because they are afraid something will happen when they are out in public.  That’s how bad the anxiety they have is.  Generalized Anxiety Disorder cannot even necessarily be “cured.”  Even with some kind of treatment people still need to find a way to lessen their anxiety themselves which is extremely difficult.

This entry was posted on 27. April 2010 at 22:31 and is filed under Social Problems. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response or trackback from your own site.