Doctors called signs of anxiety disorders in Russians

After the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of anxiety disorders, the prevalence of which has already been called the epidemic of the 21st century, has increased by 30% in Russia. At the same time, patients often cannot understand that anxiety is the cause of their physical ailment, so they turn to doctors when all the possibilities of self-treatment have been used.

But experts do not recommend taking any drugs on their own. They told what non-obvious symptoms may indicate that anxiety is the cause of the ailment.

According to a neurologist, president of the international society “Stress under Control” Elena Akarachkova, in 2014 a population study was conducted in Russia, which revealed that every second woman and every third man in the country suffer from increased anxiety. But a pathological condition called “anxiety disorder” can be diagnosed in 20-25% of women and 15% of men. Since the pandemic, there has been a 30% increase in anxiety disorders: today the number of such patients is huge.

Head of the Psychiatric Research Group of the National Scientific and Practical Center for Neurosurgery. Academician N.N. Burdenko Oleg Zaitsev says that a serious diagnosis can be said if a person’s anxiety is excessive and this condition lasts for several months. “When anxious, a person is afraid of the future, it seems to him that only troubles await him, and he cannot cope with it, literally lives with it. As a result, anxiety begins to determine his behavior, he cannot think about anything. In such cases, it is necessary to contact the therapists.

However, it must be borne in mind that 80% of people feel anxiety not in their thoughts, but in their body: it manifests itself with symptoms such as weakness, breath holding, heart palpitations, muscle tension, and back. Therefore, it is important that therapists be attentive to patients with such symptoms and, if nothing else is found, rule out anxiety disorders,” says Oleg Zaitsev.

Experts note that in people with chronic diseases, anxiety disorders often cause an aggravation of their course: an increase in blood pressure with hypertension, which the usual medications can no longer cope with, an increase in attacks in bronchial asthma; increased glucose levels in diabetes mellitus; skin exacerbations with allergies, etc.

Elena Akarachkova says that, for example, panic attacks can manifest as a hypertensive crisis: “People usually come to doctors already at the stage when pills stop helping them and in general something goes wrong with their disease.

The severity of anxiety is different for everyone. If a person has chronic prolonged stress, at first he tries to cope on his own. Buys some medicine to overcome his feelings. However, he may not be aware of his anxiety. Someone seizes stress, someone uses alcohol to calm down and fall asleep (although in fact this further undermines the adaptive reserve). Anxiety is an adaptive mechanism of the body that is needed to mobilize the forces required to deal with stress.

In general, a person goes to the doctor with bodily manifestations of already established stress, which aggravates the course of his illness, when he has exhausted all methods that can help him. And here it is very important to reduce the manifestations of his anxiety in order to compensate for the underlying diseases.

As the therapist Aleksey Bezymyanny says, many patients do not realize that they have pathological anxiety: “However, for example, if a patient goes to the clinic more than twice a month, he is more likely to have an anxiety syndrome.”

If we talk about the treatment of such conditions, then doctors emphasize that it all depends on the degree of anxiety: if it is small, you can simply change your lifestyle, introduce regular physical activity, walks in the fresh air into it.

“It helps if the person retains an adequate ability to respond to stress disorders. There are, for example, just anxious individuals who worry about something all their lives: but if they stop coping with the situation, this is already a problem, and then you need to see a doctor, ”says Dr. Zaitsev.

Treatment, doctors repeat, should be prescribed only by a specialist. “Perhaps someone is first recommended to change their lifestyle, and then turn to a psychologist. In many countries, the treatment of anxiety disorders begins precisely with this, and not with pharmacology, ”says Oleg Zaitsev.

Self-treatment in such conditions is dangerous because it can harm.