Everything You Need To Know About Panic Disorder And Agoraphobia.#3

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Everything You Need To Know About Panic Disorder And Agoraphobia.

Everything You Need To Know About Panic Disorder And Agoraphobia. #2

EVOLUTIONARY IMPACT

Panic unrest is commonly followed by agoraphobia. Agoraphobia is commonly belief of as a fear of unenclosed room but its meaning is “fear of the marketplace”. Diagnostically, agoraphobia refers to both

• The anxiety about going into situations or places where panic may occur and to leave will be hard or embarrassing and 
• The avoidance of those encounters or places. It is a normal response to what feels like a life-alarming situation. 

Some people also experience a distress of wide spaces, which on the outward seems puzzling. However, from an advance understanding, either being trapped in a small space or being exposed in the open was dangerous for early primates, who had to deal daily with threats from predators. 

An individual with agoraphobia may avoid a category of situations. Crowded places are sometimes avoided because the individual fears losing self-constraint in front of so many people. Shopping Center and large grocery stores are particularly problematic, because in extra to there being many people around, escape can often be difficult or embarrassing. It could be a considerable extent to the nearest exit in a shopping mall, and leaving your shopping cart while waiting in the checkout line will likely call attention to you. Planes and trains are problematic when crowded and escape is often impossible. The pilot is unlikely to pull over at 30,000 feet to let off a scared passenger. For agoraphobic individuals, the panic of flying has nothing with scaring crash. They prone to have fearful having no escape in the occasion of such attacks on the plane.  

Long bridges and limited access highways, such as interstate highways, are often avoided because, problem of being trapped in traffic with immediate neighborhoods, even for medical emergencies (Barlow, 2002).  

Treatment of individuals must begin with house calls because the person is initially unable to come into the office. 

 

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Causes of panic disorder and agoraphobia 

 Recent research has provided considerable insight into the factors that may enlarge the uncertainty for panic disorder and agoraphobia. This section covers biological, genetic & psychological variables that contribute to panic disorder. In addition, we will examine a research strategy provoking panic in the laboratory that exist a particularly effective way of studying the biological & psychological feature which contribute to panic and the way these feature interact.

 

Biological factors:

Ample credit for initiating the modern conceptualization of panic goes to Donald Klein, who observed the people with panic disorder responded positively to the anti-depressant of medication imipramine. In contrast, panic disorder did not answer well to the benzodiazepine medications that are used to tackle GAD. Furthermore, GAD did not answer well to the antidepressant medications that eased panic symptoms. All observations led Klein to finalize that panic was somehow different from anxiety. Doing the time of these discoveries, no formal diagnostic recognition of panic disorder, no recognition that panic was not just intense anxiety, and little was known about the physiological mechanisms of wither anxiety or panic.  

Recognizing that panic is distinct from anxiety was a crucial discovery in the effort to understand panic disorder. Because the antidepressant drugs that reduced the panic symptoms were known to influence neurotransmitter, norepinephrine, this substance focuses on considerable research. Drugs that invigorating norepinephrine functioning, like yohimbine, was discovered to provoke panic disorder attacks reliably in people with panic disorder and occasionally even in people without the disorder. 

Furthermore, drugs that inhibit norepinephrine activity, for instance clonidine, reduced some effects of panic. Data clearly implicate the neurotransmitter norepinephrine in panic disorder.  

Other researchers focused on locus coeruleus, which is brain stem, as the probable trigger for panic attacks because

• Its neurons are heavily influenced by norepinephrine.
• It has direct connections to limbic system, which modulate emotional reactions. Locus coeruleus with its link through limbic system could explain both the panic attacks and the secondary anxiety that is so common in the panic disorder.

Key brains regions limbic system, locus coeruleus Furthermore, stimulation of locus coeruleus in monkeys produces a response that appears very alike to panic attack in humans. 

Genetic factors:  

Given the evidence for a biological mechanism for panic, one might anticipate that genetic elements put up a role. Indeed, the available confirmation is regular with this expectation.  Crowe et al, (1983): 

Found that panic disorder was ten times more possible in families with a member who has panic disorder than in comparison families. There was no increase in the risk GAD in the families wherein panic disorder occurred, a result consistent with Klein’s (1964) contention that GAD and panic disorder are different phenomena.  Furthermore, several twin studies of panic disorder indicate a significant genetic contribution.

Psychological factors: 

Given that panic attacks that are relatively common and that most individuals that happens to have panic attacks do not evolve the panic disorder, one might ask what factors make people liable to grow panic disorder. One possibility is that the panic attacks are more intense or different in nature in those who develop panic disorder than in those who are able to dismiss an occasional panic attack. This is an interesting speculation, but not an easy one to test scientifically. Scientists could study the degree of physiological arousal occurring in panic, but this would not tap the critical psychological experience. People who develop panic disorder may simply be more frightened by the panic without being more physiologically aroused.  

A more productive region of speculation is hypotheses that are personalities, or trait like, variables that make some individuals more prone to panic disorder. Three variables were hypothesized to predispose people to panic disorder: 

• A likelihood to fear panic attacks. 
• tendency to over interpret unusual body sensations 
• And a likelihood to answer with fear to anxiety symptoms in general.

 

The first predisposition hypothesis focuses on likelihood to have panic disorder attacks, which are often referred to as “fear of fear”. This model suggest that people with panic grow so afraid of experiencing additional panic attacks that becomes super vigilant knowing their physiological functioning, looking for any sign of attack. Any physiological experiences that look similar to a panic symptom are responded to fearfully, so fearfully, in fact, that the individual would actually trigger panic attack. In this model, panic attacks disorder is the result of a random panic attack, which is sufficient to set off this hyper vigilant response, which in turn sets off additional panic attacks.    

  

Conclusion  

Panic disorder can be a great pain to us whether to our friends or family, we need to know the factors responsible, their causes and effects. Also we must be able to know where it could occur, the environment factor and other form of danger we might experience. So what your take on this:

• Have you ever had panic disorder?
• Do you know anyone who has experience panic disorder?
• What can we do to limit the issues of panic disorder?

Thanks for reading   

Reference List:

1.  Dimensional structure of bodily panic attack symptoms and their specific connections to paniccognitions, anxiety sensitivity and claustrophobic fears.
2. Mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/agoraphobia/symptoms-causes
3. Panic Disorder with Agoraphobia
4. Panic Disorder With and Without Agoraphobia
5. A Cure For Panic Disorder and Agoraphobia

Further Reading:

1. Wittchen, H.U., Essau, C.A. The epidemiology of panic attacks, panic disorder and agoraphobia. in: J.R. Walker, R. Norton, C.A. Ross (Eds.)Panic Disorder and Agoraphobia. A Guide for the Practitioner. Brooks/Cole, Pacific Grove; 1991:103–149.
2. Sharp DM, Power KG, Swanson V. A comparison of the efficacy and acceptability of group versus individual cognitive behaviour therapy in the treatment of panic disorder and agoraphobia in primary care. Clin Psychol Psychother2004;11:73–82.
3. Klein, D.F., Gorman, J.M. A model of panic and agoraphobic development. Acta Psychiatr. Scand.1987;76:87–95.