Anxiety Disorder

Anxiety Disorder

Introduction

Anxiety is a feeling of apprehension that is a normal reaction to everyday life stressors. Feelings of anxiety are generally experienced in momentary instances due to the stress of daily life. When anxiety persists and affects the ability to function adequately in everyday activities, this is considered a sign of an anxiety disorder (Lloyd & Mayes, 2005).

Anxiety disorder (AD) is characterized by excessive worry and anxieties that are difficult to control, cause significant distress and impairment, and occur on more days than not for at least six months. Anxiety disorder (AD) is a relatively common disorder, most often with onset during adulthood and a chronic course. AD can lead to significant impairments in role functioning, diminished quality of life, and high health care costs. The disorder can be effectively treated with medication, psychotherapy, or a combination of the two modalities. The assignment will address Drugs Therapy for AD. One-year prevalence of AD in the United States is 3-5%, while lifetime prevalence is 5-7%. Worldwide prevalence of AD may be as high as 15%. Women are affected twice as often as men. Mean age of onset is 8-9 years; onset after age 20 is uncommon. More than 90% of persons diagnosed with AD fulfill the diagnostic criteria for at least one other mental health disorder.

Discussion

The moment an athlete starts doubting his abilities, his performance will suffer. The more he performs poorly, the less he is confident that he can win the next time around. Management companies of athletes pay huge sums of money to therapists and psychologists just so their athletes will never have to go through this kind of anxiety. Some factors that contribute to performance anxiety among athletes include insecurity about age, injury and salary. Aging athletes are more susceptible to this kind of disorder because they feel that their market value has diminished.

Self doubts regarding one's performance and a desire to impress others will create a high level of anxiety which leads to 'choking' as the athletes' focus on the game is lost as is his/her physical control. Athletes that maintain a proper combination of showing their physical skills and developing their mental game are able to adapt to any unfamiliar situation that they encounter (Hardy & Parfitt, 2007).

Despite having popular appeal and being intuitively plausible, this traditional approach has been criticized for oversimplifying the relationship between anxiety and performance. It would be fair to suggest that the most central of these implies that moderate levels of intensity are appropriate for all athletes and does not account for individual differences in relation to an athlete's response to the stress of competition. Additionally, difficulties in the measurement of arousal have curbed the predictive validity of the theory in relation to the fact that confidence, motivation and trait anxiety are not taken into context and thus, alternative models have developed (Torpy, 2011).

A model known as the Individual Zones of Optimal Functioning (IZOF) evolved in response to the concerns about the inverted-U hypothesis which was created by a Russian sport ...