Types of Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety Disorders occur when people have a mixture of physical and emotional symptoms. Many people, including children and teens, develop anxiety disorders in which many of these symptoms occur when there is no identifiable cause. Anxiety disorders also interfere with personal relationships with others and affect daily activities.

Anxiety disorders include:

Generalized anxiety disorder

Involves physical symptoms that occur along with anxiety.

Panic disorders

Include sudden, irrational fear and feelings of danger or impending doom.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder

Includes frequent, repeated thoughts leading to odd persistent behavior (such as excessive hand washing).

Post-traumatic stress disorder

Involves reliving a traumatic event (such as a war experience or rape) and feelings of numbness and disinterest in daily activities.

Social Anxiety Disorder

An extreme fear of feeling embarrassed, humiliated, or scorned in public. The fear is extreme enough to interfere with a person's ability to do his or her normal daily activities. Social phobia is more common than it was once thought to be.

People with social phobia may be afraid to:

• Use public rest rooms.
• Speak or eat in public.
• Meet people they do not know.
• Go to parties and other public events.
• Go to school.