Panic disorder is identified as unforeseen and repeated event of acute fear striking by physical symptoms that may involve chest pain, heart palpitations, shortness of breath, dizziness, or abdominal distress.
These sensations often imitate symptoms of a heart attack or other life-threatening medical conditions.
Panic disorder has been found to run in families, and this may mean that inheritance plays a strong role in determining who will get it.
However, many people who have no family history of the disorder may also develop it.
It runs in families and researchers have long suspected that it has a genetic component.
The new finding, joint with gather evidence from recent animal studies, indicates that genes might increase risk for the disorder by coding for decreased expression of the receptors, say the researchers.
Patients with panic attacks are often likely to be highly reactive to medications and experience more than their share of side effects and contradictory responses.
Panic disorder (PD) is a debilitating anxiety disorder.
The first goal should be to calm it down and then to find an anti-hypertensive cure that does not upset the equilibrium established in treating these disorder.
It is characterized by unexpected and repeated episodes of intense fear, accompanied by serious physical symptoms, such as chest pain, heart palpitations, shortness of breath, dizziness, or abdominal stress.
Individuals with panic disorder are also more likely to remember information that is consistent with their panic-related beliefs than are people without panic disorder.
For example, they may recall stories about young athletes who experienced a heart attack while exercising and use this information as evidence that exercise is dangerous.
Panic disorder is a serious health problem that in many cases can be successfully treated, although there is no known cure.
It is estimated that up to 1.
7 percent of the adult American population has it at some point in their lives.
Panic disorder sometimes runs in families, but no one knows for sure why some people have it, while others don't.
When chemicals in the brain are not at a definite level it can cause a person to have panic disorder.
It is one of the anxiety disorders, and anxiety is associated with some activity changes such as "restlessness".
They are uncommon, affecting 2 to 3% of the population in a 12-month period.
It usually begins in late teenage years or early adulthood and affects women 2 to 3 times more often than men.
Panic disorder differs from an isolated panic attack, both clinically and in treatment.
Many patients respond to a combination of lifestyle change, especially control of caffeine and alcohol use, and cognitive behaviour therapy.
Panic disorder is defined by extreme panic in situations that most people would not see the danger.
This can manifest itself in a number of different ways, and one of the most common of these is avoidance of whatever situation they were in when the panic attack struck.
Panic disorders can also have economic effects.
For example, a recent study cited the case of a woman who gave up a $40,000 a year job that required travel for one close to home that only paid $14,000 a year.
Panic disorder can be a severe and disabling illness and is common in primary-care.
It can be difficult to assess when it presents acutely, as many symptoms may also be experienced with physical illness.
Panic disorder is treated with medications and cognitive-behavioral therapy, psychotherapy that teaches patients to view their attacks in a different way and demonstrates how to reduce anxiety.
Appropriate treatment by an experienced professional can reduce or prevent panic attacks in 70 to 90 percent of people with the disorder.
Panic disorder with or without agoraphobia occurs commonly in patients in primary care settings.
Treatment Treatment selection should then be made with the patients input and in consideration of the severity of the presenting complaints, and the patients specific history and preferences.
Treatment can help most people control or even stop attacks.
But symptoms can come back, especially if you stop treatment too soon.
Treatment involves trying to address these different areas to help reduce panic.
Treatment for a shorter period of time is possible, but there is substantial risk that when treatment is stopped, panic attacks will recur.
Extending the period of treatment to 6 months to a year may reduce this risk of a relapse.
Treatment involves up to twelve sessions with a therapist, over a period of three months.
Sessions are about one to one and a half hours long.
Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy, or CBT for short, is one of the therapies practised with the panic disorder person.
Well, not at first -- but after about 5 of the 10-12 weekly sessions, people see a lot of improvement and start doing things they have not been able to do for a long time, like going to a movie or going for a walk.
Cognitive-behavioural approaches, developed more recently, also treat panic attacks directly.
These treatments involve cognitive restructuring, that is, changing of maladaptive thought processes and are generally used in combination with a variety of behavioural techniques, including breathing retraining and activities that target exposure to bodily sensations and external phobic situations.
Cognitive therapy for panic is a relatively brief (8-15 sessions) treatment derived from the cognitive theory of panic disorder.
According to this theory, individuals who experience repeated panic attacks do so because they have a relatively enduring tendency to misinterpret benign bodily sensations as indications of an immediately impending physical or mental disaster.