Faced with life’s worries, anxiety is normal, and you can consider that it plays a certain role in your ability to adapt to what happens to you. But when it is no longer reasonable, it can ruin your life. Medication may then be prescribed to relieve symptoms, but the causes must be managed well.
What Is The Best Drug For Anxiety & Panic Attacks?
Treatment decisions are based on generalized anxiety that severely affects your ability to live a normal life. The two main treatments for generalized anxiety are psychotherapy and medication. You may benefit from a combination of both. It may take trial and error to find the treatment that works best for you.
Several types of drugs are available for treating generalized anxiety disorders, including the following. Discuss the benefits, risks, and possible side effects with your doctor.
Antidepressants: First-line medications include antidepressants, including selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRI) and serotonin and norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRI). Examples of antidepressants used for the treatment of generalized anxiety include duloxetine, escitalopram, paroxetine, and venlafaxine. Your doctor may also recommend other antidepressants.
Benzodiazepines: In limited circumstances, your doctor may prescribe benzodiazepines to relieve anxiety symptoms. These sedatives are usually used only to relieve acute anxiety in the short term. Because they may develop habits, these drugs are not a good choice if you have problems or problems with alcohol or drugs.
Buspirone: An anxiolytic called buspirone may continue to be used. As with most antidepressants, it usually takes several weeks to be fully effective.
Psychotherapy: Psychotherapy, also called talk therapy or counseling, involves working with a therapist to reduce your anxiety symptoms. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is the most effective psychological therapy for generalized anxiety disorder. Cognitive-behavioral therapy is usually a short-term treatment that focuses on teaching you specific skills to deal directly with your anxiety and to help you gradually return to activities that you avoided due to anxiety. Through this process, your symptoms will improve with your initial success.(4)
Every person feels anxiety about the uncertainties and fears of life. People are afraid of falling ill, losing loved ones, and people have to face uncertainty.(1)
But for many people, anxiety is no longer reasonable, it no longer obeys logic, it becomes pervasive and makes them vulnerable. It is then difficult for them to sleep, to concentrate. Their minds cling to thoughts that they cannot keep away from their brains. The anxiety starts without warning, and suddenly a panic attack takes place.
People around you may not always understand your suffering or anxiety attack which is not due to an observable anomaly or a concrete problem. But the anxiety is there and it ruins your life.
Doctors distinguish anxiety disorders from normal anxiety by the presence of several intense, lasting symptoms, which cause real discomfort and problem in everyday life, in work or leisure. These disorders affect about one in five people.(2)
The Consequence Of Anxiety
The symptoms of generalized anxiety may vary. They may include:
- Continued worry or anxiety in many areas that are not proportional to the impact of the incident
- Inattentiveness
- Indecisive and afraid to make the wrong decision
- Intractable uncertainty
- Over-thinking plans and solutions for all possible worst-case scenarios
- Treat situations and events as threats, even if they are not
- Unable to relax, feel upset, trapped or uncomfortable
- Unable to shelve or rest assured
Physical Symptoms and Signs may Include
- Difficulty sleeping
- Fatigue
- Muscle tension or soreness
- Irritable bowel syndrome, diarrhea or nausea
- Nervous or easily frightened
- Sweating
- Trembling, feeling twitching
- Irritability
Sometimes, your concerns do not go away from you. Even if there is no obvious reason, you may still feel anxious. For example, you may have great concerns about the safety of yourself or your loved one, or you may generally think that an adverse event is imminent.
Your anxiety or physical symptoms can seriously haunt your social, work or other aspects of your life. Anxiety can shift from one focus to another and can change over time and age.(3)
- Bandelow B, Michaelis S, Wedekind D. Treatment of anxiety disorders. Dialogues in clinical neuroscience. 2017;19(2):93.
- Grundy A, Cotterchio M, Kirsh VA, Kreiger N. Associations between anxiety, depression, antidepressant medication, obesity and weight gain among Canadian women. PloS one. 2014;9(6).
- Carl E, Witcraft SM, Kauffman BY, et al. Psychological and pharmacological treatments for generalized anxiety disorder (GAD): a meta-analysis of randomized controlled trials. Cognitive Behaviour Therapy. 2020;49(1):1-21.
- Robichaud M, Koerner N, Dugas MJ. Cognitive behavioral treatment for generalized anxiety disorder: From science to practice. Routledge; 2019.
