Monday, April 29, 2013

Anxiety and Depression - An Illness Or Just a State of Mind?


Anxiety and depression typically go hand in hand, often feeding off each other and creating a vicious cycle of negative emotions and behaviors within the individual that it plagues. The dreadfulness of anxiety and the symptoms that come with it can cause a person to become depressed. Waking up every day just knowing that you are going to be overcome by feelings of fear, worry, and panic is enough to send anyone downhill emotionally. What is more is that when someone is depressed, they also start experiencing anxiety symptoms such as worry that their sadness will never expire or that they will never get better. These feelings tend to get worse as time goes on.

If you are someone who experiences anxiety and depression, then you are familiar with the symptoms of both. Depression generally consists of feelings of sadness, hopelessness, worthlessness, and exhibits a disinterest in life's activities. Most everyone that suffers from depression also experiences anxiety. The panic and extreme fear that is associated with anxiety can bring on even worse symptoms of depression such as headaches, digestive symptoms and problems, unexplained pain, unexplained fatigue, even thoughts of suicide and death.

It is typically hard to find a person who does not experience both anxiety and depression combined. Just as anxiety intensifies the symptoms of depression, the opposite can take place as well. When one's anxiety has climaxed, it transpires into an explosive episode. This is called a panic attack.

Panic attacks have been known to send people to the hospital in fear that they are having a heart attack. Since panic attacks include symptoms such as extreme shaking, tremor, hot and cold sweats, chest pains, and rapid heart beat, they have been known to mirror the characteristics of cardiac arrest. Although they may seem similar in nature, they are not the same thing by a long shot. A panic attack is brought on by an imagined fear that is usually not rational by any means. Persons dealing with this monster are constantly in a state of dreaded fear because they are never sure when the next one will hit. Panic disorder can also bring about feelings of sadness and hopelessness in doubt that the vicious cycle will never come to a close. All of this causes a back-and-forth effect between anxiety and depression because a person is going from one extreme to the next.

These two hideous monsters that we call anxiety and depression are something that no one wants to have to deal with. They are similar in nature, but each is a completely different illness. Remember that depression consists of more sadness and loneliness, and anxiety brings about symptoms of fear and worry. They need to be taken seriously because they do cause a lot of harm to a person's well-being. These two illnesses can be treated with medication and therapy. Benzodiazepines and SSRIs are generally the best treatment options for the two. Although in most cases, medication is not enough. If you are experiencing one or the other, it is a good idea to seek treatment as soon as possible before the illnesses begin to devastate your health, and further ruin your life.

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