Women prone to phobic disorder: experts
LAHORE – Sadness, hopelessness, feeling worthless, excessive guilt, change in appetite, loss of interest in routine activities, recurring thoughts of death or suicide, loss of energy, fatigue, low self-esteem, inability to concentrate and change in sleep patterns are symptoms of depression.
Renowned psychiatrist and head of Department of Psychiatry, Fatima Jinnah Medical College (FJMC), Professor Dr. Haroon Rashid Chaudhry revealed this while delivering a lecture to a select gathering of general practitioners at Pattoki on May 26 night.
“Unlike adults, children may not have the vocabulary to accurately describe how they feel. Up to a certain age, they simply do not understand such complex as “self-esteem” or “guilt” or “concentration”.
If they do not understand the concepts, they cannot express these feelings in ways an adult would quickly recognize,” he said.
Talking about phobia, he stated that most phobias have a childhood onset and traumatic events or panic attacks may predispose one to develop a phobia. “Females are diagnosed with this disorder more frequently than males,” he pointed out.
The phobic item immediately provokes a panic attack or manifestation of excessive anxiety. The level of severity is related to the proximity of the phobic object and to the patients’ capacity to escape, he said.
Nevertheless, patients try to avoid the phobic object and this avoidance or worry can cause significant impairment in social or occupational functioning.
Adult patients generally have some insight as to the unwarranted nature of their fears, he added. Sub types of phobias include animal, natural environment, blood-injection injury and situational.
He further said that generalized social phobia involves fear in most social interactions, and patients often have very severe impairments in their daily lives.
Social phobia usually begins in the mid-teens and may follow an embarrassing incident. It lasts throughout the patients’ life with exacerbation at times of stress. Adults have insight that their fear is unwarranted, but children usually do not.
In generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), he said, patients experience persistent anxiety and apprehension that they cannot control. Anxiety may concern normal daily events, and the worry is excessive relative to likely possible outcomes.
Many patients are nervous or overly worried prior to the development of this disorder. Patients present in childhood, adolescence, or early adulthood, and symptoms continue throughout their lives.
“GAD is somewhat more prevalent in women that in men,” he said. In addition to anxiety, patients facing GAD may experience restlessness, lack of concentration, easy fatigability, difficulty in sleeping, irritability, and muscle tension or other musculoskeletal problems.
Source: Business Recorder
Date:5/28/2004
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