Anxiety: Definition, Symptoms, Warning Signs, Causes, Medications, Treatment Options, Prevention, and Home Remedies

What will happen to a person with anxiety?

Anxiety disorders are not life-threatening by themselves, and mortality is usually related to major depression and self-harm. However, anxiety disorders are undoubtedly associated with many psychiatric and physical manifestations. These patients are more likely to engage in heavy alcohol drinking, drug abuse, and depression. Since anxiety modulates brain activity, it also changes how specific brain centers work. These neuroendocrine changes in the brain can also lead to complications. For instance, hypertension, arrhythmia, and heart attack. That is why anxious patients usually have a higher cardiovascular risk when not properly treated. Another consequence of anxiety is an impairment in working or academic performance. This is particularly common in social anxiety disorder, which causes significant social limitations and reduces patient quality of life. In very severe cases, anxiety disorders are linked to major depression and can lead to suicide. Notably, patients do not always have depression when they decide to harm themselves. In many cases, suicidal thoughts and behavior come after acute stress, with or without mood disorders, for example, after a divorce or a significant financial loss. Another thing that usually happens to anxious patients is a comorbidity of anxiety disorders. In other words, patients with a type of anxiety typically have another. This is more common in the case of specific phobias. Patients can display multiple specific phobias to different elements. Also, agoraphobia is usually associated with panic disorders.