Generalized anxiety disorder

Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is an anxiety disorder characterized by excessive, uncontrollable and often irrational worry about events or activities. This excessive worry often interferes with daily functioning, and sufferers are overly concerned about everyday matters such as health issues, money, death, family problems, friendship problems, interpersonal relationship problems, or work difficulties. Symptoms may include excessive worry, restlessness, trouble sleeping, feeling tired, irritability, sweating, and trembling. Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is an anxiety disorder characterized by excessive, uncontrollable and often irrational worry about events or activities. This excessive worry often interferes with daily functioning, and sufferers are overly concerned about everyday matters such as health issues, money, death, family problems, friendship problems, interpersonal relationship problems, or work difficulties. Symptoms may include excessive worry, restlessness, trouble sleeping, feeling tired, irritability, sweating, and trembling. These symptoms must be consistent and ongoing, persisting at least six months, for a formal diagnosis of GAD. GAD is also common in individuals with a history of substance abuse and a family history of the disorder. Standardized rating scales such as GAD-7 can be used to assess severity of GAD symptoms. Medications which have been found to be useful include duloxetine, pregabalin, venlafaxine, and escitalopram. In a given year, approximately two percent of American adults and European adults experience GAD. Globally about 4% are affected at some point in their life. GAD is seen in women twice as much as men. Genes are attributed to about a third of general anxiety disorder's variance. Individuals with a genetic predisposition for GAD are more likely to develop GAD, especially in response to a life stressor. Long-term use of benzodiazepines can worsen underlying anxiety, with evidence that reduction of benzodiazepines can lead to a diminishment of anxiety symptoms. Similarly, long-term alcohol use is associated with anxiety disorders, with evidence that prolonged abstinence can result in a disappearance of anxiety symptoms. However, it can take up to two years for anxiety symptoms to return to baseline in about a quarter of people recovering from alcoholism. In one study in 1988–90, illness in approximately half of patients attending mental health services at British hospital psychiatric clinic, for conditions such as panic disorder or social phobia, was determined to be the result of alcohol or benzodiazepine dependence. In these patients, anxiety symptoms, while worsening initially during the withdrawal phase, disappeared with abstinence from benzodiazepines or alcohol. Sometimes anxiety pre-existed alcohol or benzodiazepine dependence, but the dependence was acting to keep the anxiety disorders going and could progressively make them worse. Recovery from benzodiazepines tends to take a lot longer than recovery from alcohol, but people can regain their previous good health. Tobacco smoking has been established as a risk factor for developing anxiety disorders. Neurotransmitter systems, inflammation, oxidative stress, mitochondria dysfunction and neurogenesis are affected by exposure to cigarette smoke which are all pathways thought to be associated with GAD. Excessive caffeine use has also been linked to aggravating and maintaining anxiety. This is due to overactivation of the sympathetic nervous system