Main causes of anxiety disorders

The etiology of the disease is not fully understood, but at the moment the scientific community is considering the following causes:

  • chronic diseases
  • medication, drug or alcohol addiction; brain injury; prolonged stress
  • melancholic constitutional portrait of a personality
  • psychotrauma in childhood or adulthood (post-traumatic syndrome)
  • concomitant neurotic conditions (neurasthenia, depression, hysteria) or psychopathy (schizophrenia, paranoia, mania)

To look a little deeper into the mechanism of triggering and developing anxiety, let's look at the main predispositions that provoke the onset of the disease.

The pathogenesis of anxiety disorder

The organic component of anxiety

Most often it has an organic pathogenesis, expressed in hormonal disorders caused by a malfunction of the thyroid gland; problems with the cardiovascular system, brain tumors. Thus, by analogy with panic attacks, diagnosis is carried out by a complete examination and exclusion of the somatic component. Somatics and organics are considered as the root causes of this type of neurosis.

Genetic determinant

The response to the stimulus can be inherited by the child, which causes the transfer of anxiety biology from the parents.

Intrauterine pathology

Due to the disturbed biological base during the prenatal period, the child could be born with increased anxiety. By itself, such a trauma is rarely a clear trigger, but the social environment in the family and parenting style can provoke the development of an anxiety disorder if the initial prerequisites are present.

Social component

The lifestyle also greatly influences the development of this type of neurosis and the transition of accentuation into a real neurosis. A sedentary lifestyle, excessive interest in news, taking drugs of a certain cluster, a toxic environment - all these factors are also of great provocative significance.

As for the etiology of psychological development, today there are three main theories:

  • Psychoanalytic. The appearance of destruction occurs due to frustration, or in other words, due to the repression of unrealized desires and needs. Often, the psyche reacts to censorship of multiple social prohibitions precisely in a neurotic way.
  • Behavioral. Here the emergence of pathology is the result of a gap between the external situation and the reaction of the psyche to it, thus anxiety arises without cause.
  • Cognitive. Considers anxiety disorder as a distorted perception of reality by the consciousness of the individual.