Anxiety Treatment News
Common Anxiety Treatment Options
Recognizing anxiety disorder symptoms is just the first step towards overcoming the problem. The next step is to find a suitable anxiety treatment plan, and this may consist of medication, behavioral therapy, dietary changes, and nutritional supplementation. According to MedicineNet.com, “if no physical illness is found, [the sufferer] may be referred to a psychiatrist or psychologist who is specially trained to diagnose and treat mental illnesses. Treatments for generalized anxiety disorder most often include a combination of medication and cognitive-behavioral therapy.”
Below are common anxiety treatments for people suffering from generalized anxiety disorder, obsessive-compulsive disorder, social anxiety disorder and other anxiety difficulties.
1. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. A licensed professional works with the sufferer in this type of treatment to identify the triggers of panic attack in the sufferer. This treatment includes probing for the thoughts, behaviors and emotions that cause the sufferer to act irrationally.
2. Anxiety medication. Several types of prescription drugs have proven to be effective for treating anxiety disorders, and the type and dosage varies by person and condition. The most common types of medication prescribed to those with anxiety disorder are a class of drugs known as benzodiazepines. These drugs have a tranquilizing effect on the body, and include drugs such as Valium, Librium, Xanax and BuSpar.
3. Antidepressants medication. People with anxiety disorders are also commonly known to show symptoms of depression. Treating the symptoms of depression can help solve most effects of anxiety disorder in some cases. Effexor and Paxil are antidepressants commonly prescribed to lift the mood and reduce the tension of a person.
4. Lifestyle change. A change in lifestyle is sometimes needed to alleviate most effects of anxiety disorder. People under chronic stress are advised to maintain a regular exercise regimen and meditation practice. Cardiovascular activities, such as yoga and pilates, improve blood and oxygen circulation thus making a person feel centered and more relaxed.
5. Nutritional supplements. For people who have difficulty sleeping or calming down, nutritional supplements such as Valerian extract, chamomile and lavender can help to reduce tension and induce sleep naturally. These supplements may be most effective for people with mild symptoms and brief episodes of chronic anxiety.
6. Dietary changes. Eating certain types of food can increase or reduce the risk of anxiety attacks or tension. Eating too many sugary foods can increase the heart rate and make it difficult to concentrate, thereby aggravating some of the symptoms of anxiety. Calming foods such as milk, oats, lentils and yogurt can help keep energy levels stable and reduce the risk of an anxiety attack. Making minor dietary changes on a regular basis often accompanies anxiety treatment programs.
It is important to explore available treatment possibilities to eliminate the symptoms of anxiety disorders. It is even more important for a sufferer to work with a qualified health professional in creating an anxiety treatment plan as a short and long-term solution.
If you’ve ever suffered from anxiety when planning holidays or traveling, there is hope. Powerful non-pharmaceutical approaches are emerging to help you to free yourself from the fearful thoughts that can lead to panic attacks.
Does social anxiety disorder respond to psychotherapy?
When psychotherapy is helping someone get better, what does that change look like in the brain? This was the question a team of Canadian psychological scientists set out to investigate in patients suffering from social anxiety disorder. Their findings are published in Psychological Science, a journal of the Association of Psychological Science.
Social anxiety is a common disorder, marked by overwhelming fears of interacting with others and expectations of being harshly judged. Medication and psychotherapy both help people with the disorder. But research on the neurological effects of psychotherapy has lagged far behind that on medication-induced changes in the brain.
“We wanted to track the brain changes while people were going through psychotherapy,” says McMaster University PhD candidate Vladimir Miskovic, the study’s lead author.
To do so, the team – led by David Moscovitch of the University of Waterloo, collaborating with McMaster’s Louis Schmidt, Diane Santesso, and Randi McCabe; and Martin Antony of Ryerson University – used electroencephalograms, or EEGs, which measure brain electrical interactions in real time. They focused on the amount of “delta-beta coupling”, which elevates with rising anxiety.
The study recruited 25 adults with social anxiety disorder from a Hamilton, Ontario clinic. The patients participated in 12 weekly sessions of group cognitive behaviour therapy, a structured method that helps people identify – and challenge – the thinking patterns that perpetuate their painful and self-destructive behaviours.
Two control groups – students who tested extremely high or low for symptoms of social anxiety – underwent no psychotherapy.
The patients were given four EEGs – two before treatment, one halfway through, and one two weeks after the final session. The researchers collected EEG measures of the participants at rest, and then during a stressful exercise: a short preparation for an impromptu speech on a hot topic, such as capital punishment or same-sex marriage; participants were told the speech would be presented before two people and videotaped. In addition, comprehensive assessments were made of patients’ fear and anxiety.
When the patients’ pre- and post-therapy EEGs were compared with the control groups’, the results were revealing: Before therapy, the clinical group’s delta-beta correlations were similar to those of the high-anxiety control group and far higher than the low-anxiety group’s. Midway through, improvements in the patients’ brains paralleled clinicians’ and patients’ own reports of easing symptoms. And at the end, the patients’ tests resembled those of the low-anxiety control group.
“We can’t quite claim that psychotherapy is changing the brain,” cautions Miskovic. For one thing, some of the patients were taking medication, and that could confound the results. But the study, funded by the Ontario Mental Health Foundation, is “an important first step” in that direction – and toward understanding the biology of anxiety and developing better treatments.
The work might also alter perceptions of therapy. “Laypeople tend to think that talk therapy is not ‘real’, while they associate medications with hard science, and physiologic change,” says Miskovic. “But at the end of the day, the effectiveness of any program must be mediated by the brain and the nervous system. If the brain does not change, there won’t be a change in behaviour or emotion.”
Psychotherapy triggers changes in the brains of people with social anxiety disorder.
Medication and psychotherapy are used to treat people with social anxiety, a common disorder in which people experience overwhelming fears of interacting with others and expectations of being harshly judged. But there’s been far less research on the neurological effects of psychotherapy (talk therapy) than on medication-induced brain changes.
To look into the efficacy of talk therapy for treating social anxiety and track the brain changes while people were going through psychotherapy, researchers studied 25 adults from Canada with social anxiety disorder who underwent 12 weekly sessions of group cognitive behaviour therapy, which is meant to help patients identify and challenge their unhealthy thinking patterns that perpetuate the behaviour. These clinical group participants were compared to two control groups who tested either extremely high or low for symptoms of social anxiety but received no psychotherapy.
All of the participants underwent a series of electroencephalograms (EEGs), which measure brain electrical interactions. The researchers focused on the amount of delta-beta coupling, which increases with rising anxiety. The patients were given four EEGs – two before treatment, one halfway through, and one two weeks after the final session. The researchers collected EEG measures of the participants at rest, and then during a stressful exercise: a short preparation for an impromptu speech on a hot topic, such as capital punishment or same-sex marriage; participants were told the speech would be presented before two people and videotaped. In addition, comprehensive assessments were made of patients’ fear and anxiety.
Before treatment, the clinical group’s delta-beta correlations were similar to those of the high-anxiety control group and much higher than those of the low-anxiety control group. When measured at a point about midway through psychotherapy, improvements in the patients’ brains matched symptom improvement reported by both doctors and patients. After they completed psychotherapy, the patients’ EEG results were similar to those of the low-anxiety group.
This study might alter perceptions of therapy as people tend to think that talk therapy is not ‘real,’ while associating medications with hard science, and physiologic change. It is also an important first step toward understanding the biology of anxiety and developing better treatments.