Hello. I'm Dr Beth Colby from Talk Mental Health. I'm a psychiatrist in
London. So the anxiety disorders; I'm going to
talk about agoraphobia, social phobia and
panic disorder, generalized anxiety disorder,
obsessive compulsive disorder and post-traumatic stress disorder.
First of all, what's anxiety? Well, anxiety is a symptom not a diagnosis.
People have physical symptoms and psychological symptoms,
very uncomfortable feeling, may have fast heart rate, palpitations, may breathe
fast (hyperventilate) leading to tingling in their hands feet
and mouth; they may have stomach pains, indigestion,
muscle pains, headache; they may have problems sleeping, urinate more
frequently, have diarrhoea - there's a whole heap of
symptoms - and with the psychological symptoms, fear, worry
impending doom, thinking people might be looking at them
in a negative way, don't like them, or they've upset somebody,
things like that. So that's the physical and psychological symptoms of anxiety
itself. Now in the anxiety disorders, with
agoraphobia people feel anxious in closed
spaces and also in open spaces, busy, busy places, so it could be in a
shopping mall ,it could be on a bus and people
they feel anxious and then this may lead to them
avoiding these situations and staying at home.
It's a very debilitating condition and people feel anxious
each time they may need to get out of the house and want to get out of
the house, but they feel so dreadful they stay in
the house. Social phobia is where people feel
really anxious in sort of small social groups, so if they
they don't know what to say they may feel embarrassed,
feel as though people are looking at them and know they're anxious,
worry that they may upset somebody or have offended somebody,
worry that they may embarrass themselves so they then
may go on to avoid these situations to try not to feel anxious.
So then, panic disorder. This is where people feel
panicky and anxious in certain situations and have what we call
panic attacks, which are episodes of severe, severe anxiety,
maybe lasting a few minutes. People are worried that they may have a heart
attack or faint to the floor, their
hearts racing really, really fast and they've
got to exit that situation as soon as they can
and then avoid that situation because of fear that they may
get a panic attack again. So if it happens on a
bus, then they may avoid going on buses; if it happens in a shop they may avoid
going to the shops. So it's similar to agoraphobia
in that people feel anxious in that situation, but they feel
so panicky they've got to exit it really, really quickly and they've got
real real fear and worry that this will happen again.
They think they're going to die, even. Okay, going on to generalized anxiety
disorder. So this is where people feel anxious but
not in a particular situation, not a particular time but all the time
really, so that's why it's called generalized,
and anxiety is very severe in that people find it hard
to get to work, to carry on their normal lives.
Going on to obsessive compulsive disorder - what's an obsession? What's a
compulsion? Well, an obsession is a recurrent thought in
people's mind, so the thought may be 'Oh my hands are
dirty,' or 'I'm dirty, I've got germs. iIve got to
wash my hands a lot to get rid of these germs,
otherwise I may get ill or my family may get ill;'
and these thoughts are unwanted, they keep going in people's head
so they feel compelled - so that's the compulsive bit -
they feel they've got to do that thing to stop them feeling anxious.
So, if people have the thought going through their head
of 'I've got germs,' they feel as though they've got to wash their hands
and their anxiety may go a bit, but then the thought comes again, 'Well, what if I
haven't washed them properly - i've got to wash them again' - and this
carries on and carries on, so people may eventually have their
hands red and raw because they're washing their hands all
the time. But because the thoughts going through their head all
the time and they know that it's silly in a way, but the thought
is just so persistent and unwanted that they've,
they've got to do something to stop having that thought and to relieve the
anxiety, so that leads to hand washing. Other ones
are also of people's health, health and safety, so people may have
obsessions about that they may have left the gas cooker on, so they'll go
home or keep checking that the gas is off. They're relieved
when it when they find that it is, but then the thought comes again, 'Oh, well,
what if I didn't check properly?' and they've got to do it again. Or
likewise with 'Did I lock the door, are my family going to be safe at night,
because i haven't locked the doors, and may burglars come?'
So they're up and down looking that the door is being checked
or if they go out the house they may keep coming back or checking their car
that has been locked. The last anxiety disorder I'm going to talk about
is post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD.
What's that? Post means after, traumatic is a trauma, a really life-threatening or
really, really awful thing happening which could be like being sexually
abused or molested; it could be having seen something dreadful like the
Manchester bombing or the London Bridge attack; it
could be having seen, been in a car crash and
being worried for your life; or it could have been
being in the battlefield and horrible things happening there.
So when people have post-traumatic stress disorder
they get what we call flashbacks and also nightmares.
So flashbacks are where people experience that
really awful thing that they've gone through
again. So they're in their normal everyday
lives - suddenly they'll get a flashback, and they're
then and there, in that moment in time, they're in that situation again
and they are reliving everything they saw and everything
that they experienced and all that anxiety that they had,
and they're really really horrible and then also may have
nightmares about it. Right, okay, so we've talked about terminology in
common mental health conditions and I've talked about
neurotic disorders where I've talked about different
anxiety disorders. Remember to like, subscribe and make a comment or
suggestion. Thank you very much, it's Dr Beth Colby
from Talk Mental Health. 'Bye.