By Melanie A. Greenberg, Ph.D. Calming the mind We all know the uncomfortable feeling of anxiety. Our hearts race, our fingers sweat, and our breathing gets shallow and labored. We experience racing thoughts about a perceived threat that we think is too much to handle. That’s because our “fight or flight” response has kicked in, resulting in sympathetic arousal and a narrowing of attention and focus on avoiding the threat.

Depression and anxiety have very different influences on how we perceive physical symptoms. Christie Nicholson reports Past studies have shown that something called “negative affect” (which is an overall smorgasbord of anger, sadness, fear, irritation, etc.) causes us to inflate the number of physical symptoms we feel. But recent research from the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology has found that individual emotions—like depression and anxiety—have very different influences on our perceived physical symptoms.

  Psychiatric Times. APA CONFERENCE  By Arline Kaplan | May 24, 2011 Patients with anxiety disorders who self-medicate with alcohol(Drug information on alcohol) or drugs may be increasing their risk for developing incident substance use disorders, according to a study presented at the American Psychiatric Association’s recent annual meeting. Jennifer Robinson, who is working on her PhD in clinical psychology and is a research associate for the department of psychiatry from the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg, Canada, told APA attendees that anxiety disorders and substance use disorders are common comorbidities as determined by clinical and community-based research and that comorbidity results in increased mental health treatment utilization,more severe symptomatology,…

Divorce, layoffs, threat of terrorism — there’s plenty of anxiety around for everyone these days. And very often, the source is something we can’t change. How do you know when it’s time to get help dealing with your anxieties? To better understand the underpinnings of anxiety — and how to better cope — WebMD turned to two anxiety experts: Jerilyn Ross, MA, LICSW, director of The Ross Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders, Inc., and Linda Andrews, MD, assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

Street criminals are selective about their victims. Unfortunately, many of us unwittingly give off signals that mark us as easy targets.   Midnight in New Orleans. Lisa Z. was walking home from the French Quarter hotel where she works when three men stepped around a corner and stopped in front of her. When she tried to cross the street to get away, the men charged after her. “One guy clotheslined me,” she recalls, “then choked me, threw me on the sidewalk, and jammed a chrome, snub-nosed .38 revolver against my cheekbone.” Lisa was kicked, robbed, and then told not to move or she’d be shot in the face.

  By Peter Strong, Ph.D. Created Jan 31 2011 – 1:07pm Panic disorder affects between 3 and 6 million Americans, and is twice as common in women. We all experience panic at some time in our lives, but those suffering from panic disorder experience panic attacks on a daily basis, and this form of anxiety can severely reduce the quality of life, making even simple activities like grocery shopping unmanageable. In its most severe form this crippling form of anxiety can lead to agoraphobia, a very intense fear of going beyond the safety zone of one’s own home. In such severe cases, it is wise to seek medical help.

    It can come out of nowhere. You’re shopping for groceries or buckling your seat belt when suddenly your muscles contract and your heart begins to pound. Panic attacks can be both bewildering and terrifying, but they’re not unusual. An estimated 2.4 million people experience one every year. It may begin as tightness in the chest, shortness of breath or a galloping heartbeat. Many sufferers believe they are having a heart attack and rush to the emergency room. The cause of an attack can be unclear, but they often arise in the face of major life changes, such as childbirth or a new job. Attacks may also follow trauma.…

 Students can combat test anxiety and improve performance by writing about their worries immediately before the exam begins, according to a University of Chicago study published Friday in the journal Science. Researchers found that students who were prone to test anxiety improved their high-stakes test scores by nearly one grade point after they were given 10 minutes to write about what was causing them fear, according to the article, “Writing about Testing Boosts Exam Performance in the Classroom.” The article appears in the Jan. 14 issue of Science and is based on research supported by the National Science Foundation.

There are many types of anxiety disorders that include panic disorder, obsessive compulsive disorder, post traumatic stress disorder, social anxiety disorder, specific phobias, and generalized anxiety disorder. Anxiety is a normal human emotion that everyone experiences at times. Many people feel anxious, or nervous, when faced with a problem at work, before taking a test, or making an important decision. Anxiety disorders, however, are different. They can cause such distress that it interferes with a person’s ability to lead a normal life.

  Why we worry, fuss, and fret far more than we need to. One in four of us will suffer from an anxiety disorder in our lifetime. And the rest of us will worry, fuss, and fret far more than we need to. Now, in this excerpt from his book, Worry, the psychiatrist who helped put attention deficit disorder on the map offers his treatment program for brooders. “Worry gives a small thing a big shadow.”—Swedish Proverb.