Nearly 20 million Americans have been diagnosed with some form of an anxiety disorder. There are generally a number of treatments that are available to these individuals for helping them begin overcoming anxiety. This article will cover some of the advantages and disadvantages of each treatment option.
The most common method treating anxiety is through medications prescribed by a mental health specialist. These medications are typically any one of the benzodiazepine class of drugs, examples of which include Xanax and Ativan. These medications work best on episodic anxiety attacks. However they are not nearly as effective in dealing with chronic anxiety. Among the drawbacks to this type of drug is that they are habit forming. Once you begin to use a benzodiazepine to treat your anxiety you will have to take it everyday and failure to do so with elicit extreme withdrawal symptoms. Naturally, this is not the best option.
The next option is to begin therapy with a trained psychotherapist. There are several advantages and disadvantages of this method as well. The first thing about therapy is that it is generally not very effective on its own at alleviating anxiety symptoms. Still, time spent with a therapist can contribute to coming up with new strategies for combating your anxiety. Therapy alone never really results in freedom from the symptoms of anxiety.
The greatest disadvantage to therapy is that most therapists do not suffer from severe anxiety disorders. Therefore they have no first hand information about which therapies are most effective for treating the symptoms. They do however undergo a lot of training in order to obtain their license. In general, the profession has a ways to go to improve itself in the treatment of anxiety.
Another method to get treatment for your anxiety disorder is to check into an inpatient hospital. This type of inpatient treatment can be very helpful if your anxiety is crippling to the point that you are unable to function in life. It can be especially helpful if you are contemplating suicide or harming yourself.The first order of business at a hospital is to alleviate the risk of patient suicide. In this way the treatment options provided by an inpatient clinic are usually not very precise for dealing with more subtle forms of anxiety.
The main therapy employed by psychiatric hospitals is called DBT or dialectical behavioral therapy. DBT teaches simple distress management techniques and mindfulness therapy. If you are a severely low functioning human being with a history of suicide attempts or self harm then DBT may be for you. If you have a more refined condition then you will get very little out of this form of treatment.
Finally, in patient treatment can be very expensive. A decent clinic runs at least $750 a day and if you do not have insurance the cost becomes prohibitive. However, if you are close to suicide, this may be a small price to pay.
Those are three of the main methods for treating anxiety disorders. If you want to start overcoming anxiety you may want to consider one of these options.