Panic Disorder

A panic attack is sudden and very intense feeling of fear that causes an extreme feeling of danger. It comes with symptoms of anxiety, rapid heart rate, cold sweats and hyperventilation.
A person suffering from panic disorder may have several panic attacks in a month and have severe fear of having another. Panic disorder is a chronic, crippling condition that can be a major blow on a sufferer’s family, work, and life. The first attack comes without warning. A person can be running their daily errands when an attack can happen. Heart palpation, cold sweats and a feeling of immanent doom occurs. An attack can last for seconds or minutes but to a sufferer it feels like forever. Once you have your first attack you are left always waiting for the next attack to happen. One out of 63 Americans is affected each year with this debilitating disorder. The fear of panic attacks increases and a person begins to stay away from situations in which a panic attack has the possibility to happen. In extreme cases, a sufferer is afraid to leave the house for fear of an attack happening in an open public place where people can witness the panic attack, causing the feeling of embarrassment and being labeled “crazy”. This irrational fear is called agoraphobia. Researchers don’t know what exactly triggers panic attacks, but they believe part of it is genetic. They feel that people with this disorder may have increased sensitivity within the nervous system and the body doesn’t process its normal stress decreasing chemicals. People that suffer from panic disorder normally have their first panic attack in their 20’s. Since physical symptoms mimic a heart attack, the sufferer needs to go through battery of physical tests to rule out a physical condition. Most people have nothing physically wrong with them and it’s at that point they are diagnosed with a mental condition. Once getting that label a person feels like they’re crazy, sometime shying away from seeking help and avoiding people so that no one is around when another attack occurs. A person with a panic disorder is referred to a therapist for treatment if they are open to that. Patients are treated in combination of therapy and medication. Most people respond to therapy but say that medication helps reduce or eliminate panic attacks by changing the brain chemicals usually within the first two months. While a sufferer of panic attacks may have long periods of improvement, panic attacks seldom go away on its own. Panic disorder responds well to therapy and medication. A decrease of 90% after 6 to 8 weeks of treatment can be expected. Unfortunately, most people don’t seek help and try to hide their attacks causing lose of friends, family and jobs. There is no way to prevent the first attack, some try antidepressants, therapy and avoid stimulants. For me, exercise and herbal remedies greatly helped but there is always this huge fear that one can’t shack off that there’s another attack just waiting to happen at any second of any day for the rest of your life.

References
Feldman, R.S. (2013). The Major Psychological Disorders. Essentials of Understanding Psychology, pp. 463-464.
Turkington, C.A. (2006). Panic Disorder. The Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine, Third edition, Vol. 4, pp. 2778-2780.