Anxiety Disorder Essay -- Psychology, Phobia, Agoraphobia

Among many psychological disorders, anxiety disorders are the most predominant in the United States. According to Antony (2011), anxiety disorders affect nearly 28.8 percent of the population. An extreme and unrealistic anxiety is the most common symptom that characterizes all the psychological conditions within the category of anxiety disorders. The category includes specific phobia, agoraphobia, social phobia, panic disorder, post-traumatic stress disorder, generalized anxiety disorder, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. This paper examines obsessive-compulsive disorder discussing the major etymological explanations of anxiety disorders in general, specifically describing the condition, and discussing actual treatments for the disorder. Anxiety played an important role in the psychoanalytic theory, and, as a result, psychoanalytic interpretation is important to understand anxiety disorders. In the psychoanalytic interpretation, anxiety is defined an intense sensation of endangerment and an unconscious mechanism produced by unconscious conflicts. According to Wolman and Stricker (1994), it can be understood as a symptom that is the cause and effect of itself and a product of past experience, psychological mechanisms, and psychic contents like persecutory anxiety or separation anxiety. For Freud, nervous anxiety was produced by sexual frustration and repressed sexual drives, or libido. In his theory, sexual frustration creates a biochemical imbalance that results in anxiety. However, this idea does not have support on the empirical basis because there is not a biochemical process that correlates with Freud’s theory. In addition, on the psychological basis, sexually abstinent people do not always experience ext reme anxiety (Wolma... ..., and pharmacological treatment would be better in the case of patients with obsessive-compulsive disorder. In this sense, the patients would be encouraged to examine their beliefs or assumptions that create their compulsions. The etymological explanations of anxiety disorders represent the bases for the creation of any treatment for obsessive-compulsive disorder, while they increase our knowledge about the condition. Since diagnose is extremely related with the severity of the symptoms, the correct treatment approach is also related with the state of the condition. Future research is needed to enhance our knowledge and understanding of the causes and elements that contributed to the condition’s occurrence. In conclusion since every treatment has its limitation, a combination of different treatment is the best methodology to treat obsessive-compulsive disorder.