Panic Disorder
Panic attacks and panic disorders are disabling conditions for the people who suffer from them. Panic attacks are not physically harmful, but they are often so frightening to sufferers that sometimes the attacks will lead to the avoidance of any activity or environment that have been associated with feelings of panic in the past. This in turn leads to the more severe and disabling disorder of agoraphobia.
Onset and symptoms
Panic attacks usually start in young adulthood, but can occur at any stage of an adult’s life. A panic episode usually starts without any warning, and peaks after about 10 minutes. The duration can be anywhere from a few minutes to a half hour or longer. The sufferer will experience rapid heartbeat, trembling, sweating, and acute shortness of breath. Other symptoms may include chills, cramps, nausea, hot flashes, pain or tightness in the chest, derealization or depersonalization, a feeling that there is a lump in the throat, trouble swallowing and dizziness. Women are more likely to experience panic attacks, since they are caused by the body’s natural fight-or-flight response to danger, but in an exaggerated and inappropriate form. If a person was attacked by a dangerous wild animal, their body would react instinctively, and their heart and breathing would speed up as their body prepared for a life-threatening situation. A panic attack is the body’s flight-or-fight response system being triggered without the presence of an actual external threat.
Panic disorders develop in people who have an overly sensitive central nervous system. When such an individual is exposed to a highly threatening external stressor, it causes a panic attack. The most common stressors to cause an initial panic attack include a traumatic event such as a rape or assault, an earthquake, or the death of a loved one. A long period of chronic stress such as pressures at work, family, friends, academic pressures and health concerns, to name a few. A medical procedure that causes the person to become overly conscious of their body. An adverse reaction to a drug, usually marijuana, or to a prescription medication.
The first panic attack sensitises the central nervous system to the symptoms of slight physiological arousal that is normally experienced during typical daily anxiety. Once the nervous system is sensitised, the subject begins to have anxiety/panic symptoms without the presence of a threat. When the subject starts to have symptoms like dizziness or chest pain, he or she interprets it as something internally wrong with them since there is no external threat causing them to feel anxious.
Without an external threat to explain the anxiety symptoms, the subject becomes frightened of the anxiety symptoms themselves, thinking that they are having a heart attack or going crazy. This fear adds to the problem, and they have a full-blown panic attack. Panic attacks are terrifying for most people, and the fear then becomes about the prospect of another panic attack, which becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The intense fear of having another panic attack leads to more panic attacks, and a vicious cycle evolves into a fully-fledged panic disorder. With highly effective cognitive behavioural treatment interventions available today, panic disorder is a treatable problem.
A three-pronged treatment is highly effective in helping people to overcome this disorder. This consists of education and information about panic disorder, cognitive-behavioural psychotherapy, and medication depending upon the severity and frequency of the panic attacks.
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