Anxiety Disorders-Nursing Paper Examples

Anxiety Disorders

Occasionally, people worry about health, family problems, school grades, or finances. However, anxiety disorders portray more than temporary fear or worry. In anxiety disorders, the fear persists for long periods, thus affecting a patient’s daily activities, such as relationships, schoolwork, or job performance. Anxiety disorders include panic disorder, obsessive-compulsive, generalized anxiety, social anxiety, and phobia-related disorders. This essay will discuss the diagnostic criteria for panic and obsessive-compulsive disorder and provide evidence-based intervention.

Panic disorder diagnosis criteria comprise Criterion A, marked by recurrent unexpected panic attacks presenting with palpitations, pounding heart, chest pain, sweating, feeling doomed, and being out of control. Criterion B asserts that at least one episode must be followed by one or both of persistent fear and worry about additional panic attacks or their effects or an immense maladaptive behavioral change in one or more months. In Criterion C, the disturbance is not attributed to the physiological effects of drug and substance use or illnesses such as cardiopulmonary disease. However, another mental health disorder does not explain the disturbance in Criterion D.

In Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), Criterion A marks the presence of obsession, compulsion, or both. Consequently, In Criterion B, the obsession becomes time-consuming, causing clinical distress or social impairment. Consequently, like in panic disorder’s Criterion C, the obsessive and compulsive disturbances remain not attributed to the physiological effects of a substance or medical conditions. In Criterion D, symptoms of other mental health disorders do not explain the disturbances (Brock & Hany, 2022) (Anxiety Disorders).

The main treatment approach for panic disorders comprises psychological interventions used as a stand-alone or adjunctively pharmacological treatment that has been rendered potent. Moreover, psychological interventions include cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) that aids clients in identifying, questioning, and modifying their attitudes,. In addition, thoughts, and beliefs, relating them to behavioral and emotional reactions that cause panic.

The CBT therapy remain structured in 6-20 sessions, where the client and therapist identify the problem. Consequently, set goals, and devise strategies and skills to promote recovery. On the contrary, the main treatment for OCD entails pharmacologic and CBT with exposure response prevention (ERP). The exposure and prevention response identifies the patient’s fears by urging them to resist the compulsion to restructure their mind and alter habits related to compulsion (Stein et al., 2019). FDA-SSRIs like fluoxetine remain administered with CBT to establish therapeutic relationships between the client and the therapist.