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Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD): A mental health disorder where a person has excessive and ongoing anxiety and worry that affects day-to-day life (Mayo Clinic, 2017).
Facts about GAD
Facts about GAD
This disorder can impact both children and adults at any point in life.
Linked to genetic factors, brain chemistry, and personal experiences of the person's life.
Generalized anxiety disorder can impair your ability to do tasks, decrease your energy, and increase your likelihood of depression.
Generalized anxiety disorder has a combined lifetime prevalence of 3.7%
(Mayo Clinic, 2017; Ayelet Meron Ruscio, 2017)
Diagnosis Criteria
Diagnosis Criteria
Using DSM-5 outlined criteria, clinical professionals look out for:
Excessive anxiety and worry on various topics. Worry is relatively ongoing and clearly in a large amount for at least 6 months
The worry is difficult to control, and it may switch from different topics in both children and adults
In order for someone to be diagnosed, they need at least three of the following symptoms
Restlessness
Easily feel fatigued or tired
Loss in concentration
Feeling irritable (may not be noticed by others)
Muscle aches/soreness
Restless/unsatisfying sleep
Other symptoms include: Overthinking, Unable to handle being uncertain about different topics, Seeing non-hostile events as threatening
Factors to rule out when diagnosing GAD
Physiological effects of drugs or medical conditions
Not better explained by different mental disorders
(Verywell Mind, 2023; Mayo Clinic, 2017; Locke et al., 2015)
Treatments
Treatments
(NHS, 2022; Deborah R. Glasofer, 2021)
Cognitive behavioral therapy is the best treatment for GAD. This treatment teaches the patient healthier ways of thinking when dealing with anxiety.
Applied relaxation, which involves learning how to relax your muscles in a certain way during situations that typically cause anxiety.
Acceptance and commitment therapy, similar to CBT in which the patient learns a better way of thinking. However, it differs because the goal is to reduce your struggle dealing with anxious thoughts and to increase your amount of meaningful life activities.
SSRI medication such as, sertraline, escitalopram, and paroxetine.
Antidepressants and Anxiolytics such as, Xanax, Prozac, Ativan, or Lexapro. These are the worst treatments for GAD, as they have horrible side effects.
IMPORTANT VOCAB
IMPORTANT VOCAB
(Recovery Research Institute, n.d.; Spielman, 2020)
Pharmacotherapy- Treating a disorder or disease with some form of medication.
Anxiety- Being apprehensive and cautious towards an event a person sees as negative. Generalized Anxiety has this constantly.
Diathesis- Having a predisposition to a disorder. This can happen to those with Generalized Anxiety Disorder as it is related to genetic factors.
Comorbidities
Comorbidities
are health conditions that occur at the same time as one another. (Christiansen, 2022)
Major Depression Disorder - A disorder that causes constant feelings of sadness and lack of interest/motivation. This gives you trouble in completing daily activities and may make you feel worthless. This is the most common comorbidity of GAD
Bipolar Disorder - A disorder that causes drastic mood changes in a person, from manic to depressed.
Substance Use Disorder - When someone turns to substances as a form of self medicating.
(Mayo Clinic, 2017; NWLS, 2019)
Study Suggests that GAD can interfere with school performance
Kajastus and her colleagues (2023) investigated the relationship between symptoms of anxiety disorders like Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) and Social Anxiety Disorder (SAD) and perceived difficulties in school in adolescents. In the study, 37,905 Finnish upper secondary school students had their data analyzed using exploratory factor analysis to see indicators of academic and social difficulties in school, and logistic regression analysis was used to find the relationship between anxiety symptoms and school difficulties. What was found was that both GAD and SAD were associated with difficulties in academic and social parts of school, and GAD symptoms in particular were associated with a high risk of academic difficulties, regardless of whether the GAD included any other extra disorder or not. These findings suggest that overly worrying, a symptom of GAD, causes students who have it to have lower performance in the academic and social aspects of their school life.
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