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Many
people with anxiety disorders can be helped with treatment.
Therapy for anxiety disorders often involves medication
or specific forms of psychotherapy.
Medications,
although not cures, can be very effective at relieving
anxiety symptoms. Today, thanks to research by scientists
at NIMH and other research institutions, there are more
medications available than ever before to treat anxiety
disorders. So if one drug is not successful, there are
usually others to try. In addition, new medications to
treat anxiety symptoms are under development.
For
most of the medications that are prescribed to treat anxiety
disorders, the doctor usually starts the patient on a
low dose and gradually increases it to the full dose.
Every medication has side effects, but they usually become
tolerated or diminish with time. If side effects become
a problem, the doctor may advise the patient to stop taking
the medication and to wait a week—or longer for certain
drugs—before trying another one. When treatment is near
an end, the doctor will taper the dosage gradually.
Research
has also shown that behavioral therapy and cognitive-behavioral
therapy can be effective for treating several of the anxiety
disorders.
Behavioral
therapy focuses on changing specific actions and uses
several techniques to decreases or stop unwanted behavior.
For example, one technique trains patients in diaphragmatic
breathing, a special breathing exercise involving slow,
deep breaths to reduce anxiety. This is necessary because
people who are anxious often hyperventilate, taking rapid
shallow breaths that can trigger rapid heartbeat, lightheadedness,
and other symptoms. Another technique—exposure therapy—gradually
exposes patients to what frightens them and helps them
cope with their fears.
Like
behavioral therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy teaches
patients to react differently to the situations and bodily
sensations that trigger panic attacks and other anxiety
symptoms. However, patients also learn to understand how
their thinking patterns contribute to their symptoms and
how to change their thoughts so that symptoms are less
likely to occur. This awareness of thinking patterns is
combined with exposure and other behavioral techniques
to help people confront their feared situations. For example,
someone who becomes lightheaded during a panic attack
and fears he is going to die can be helped with the following
approach used in cognitive-behavioral therapy. The therapist
asks him to spin in a circle until he becomes dizzy. When
he becomes alarmed and starts thinking, "I'm going to
die," he learns to replace that thought with a more appropriate
one, such as "It's just a little dizziness—I can handle
it."
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