Hello! It's Dr Beth Colby. Today I'm going to be talking about Generalized
Anxiety Disorder. Basically, Generalized Anxiety Disorder 'does what it says on
the tin,' to quote a phrase. It's generalized; that means that the anxiety
is not limited to a particular circumstance or environment, that people
can get it anytime and it's free-floating,
which means it's you can have it anytime or anywhere. Anxiety, well I've done a
talk on anxiety, but basically it's a really uncomfortable feeling with
psychological and physical symptoms, and it's not a diagnosis in itself; and
disorder, well that means it's an illness of some sort.
Now 5.9 percent of adults in England suffer from Generalized Anxiety Disorder,
so it's fairly common. It's more common in women, and also in those people who
may have a background history of long- term environmental stress. As with other
anxiety disorders, the main symptoms are quite variable, and different people
have different ones, but people will feel on edge,
fearful, might have muscle pains, dizziness, palpitations, trembling,
sweating. The course of Generalized Anxiety Disorder is variable, but it's
generally chronic or longer-lasting. It also fluctuates, and so people may
feel anxious more at some time than others, and for different periods of time
over a longer period. Now I'm going on to the International Classification of
Diseases, ICD, the 10th edition by the World Health Organization, to let you
know how doctors diagnose Generalized Anxiety Disorder. So the
sufferer of Generalized Anxiety Disorder must
have the symptoms for several weeks on end, or even months, and they must have
three types of symptoms. They must also have the symptoms most days of the
period of time. The first of the symptoms are:
apprehensive feelings and worry that they're going to have misfortunes in the
future. They may feel on edge and tense, difficulty concentrating and have tension in
their body. This can include fidgeting,
trembling, difficulty relaxing. The third group of symptoms is what we call
autonomic overactivity. There's the autonomic nervous system in our body,
which when it overacts, basically can cause sweating, palpitations, tachypnoea,
which is breathing fast, dizziness, dry mouth and discomfort in the top of the
abdomen. In children, they need frequent reassurance, and also they may
have different physical symptoms such as headache.
Thank you for listening to my
video on Generalized Anxiety Disorder. if you wish to see any more of my videos,
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