Anxiety as a Mental Health Disorder

Running head: ANXIETY AS A MENTAL HEALTH DISORDER
ANXIETY AS A MENTAL HEALTH DISORDER
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note:

1ANXIETY AS A MENTAL HEALTH DISORDER
Emotional, social, and psychological wellbeing and the ability to handle and counter
stress and worries can be described as the mental health of a person. Behavioral changes and
mood swings can be frequently seen in people having some degree of problem in their state of
mental health (Rogers and Pilgrim 2014). The World Health Organization says that the state of
mental wellbeing where the individual can achieve and realize the maximum potential and can
tackle normal stresses while working productively is called the ideal mental health condition.
There are various conditions, which can be termed as unhealthy mental condition, not necessarily
showing very severe symptoms always (World Health Organization 2014). It is seen that people
often neglect minor disorders related to mental health like stress and anxiety, which can lead to
severe complications in the future. Anxiety is fear of a chronic type and it increases in severity
with time. Anxiety can cause fear towards very simple life situations like going to the school,
completing office projects and similar situations. In this essay, a case study of a patient named
Georgia who is suffering from severe anxiety and related side effects has been studied and
possible preventions and cure has been suggested accordingly.
Mental health is often misunderstood with mental illness or madness in a large section of
the society (Musiat, Goldstone and Tarrier 2014). Apart from that, it is still a taboo to visit
psychiatrists and specialists even if minor disturbance in the ideal state is detected. First of all a
clear understanding of mental health is necessary, which would make a clear idea about mental
illness. Mental health is ideally the perfect or nearly the perfect state of psychological condition
(Green et al. 2014), and the absence of major mental illnesses that needs to be addressed. Human
beings are entitled to do much more than just work like machines, perform the required
psychological activities and then die. The basic needs of human wellbeing are ability to enjoy the
life, a balanced approach between work, family and leisure activities, all comprises of a healthy

2ANXIETY AS A MENTAL HEALTH DISORDER
mental condition. World health organization states that good mental health is related to wellbeing
of psychological and mental condition (World Health Organization 2018). The organization
aims at enhancing the mental health of the society at an individual level and preventing further
mental disorders (World Health Organization 2018). Now the absence of the ideal or best
possible mental condition may not be termed as mental illness, but any mental condition that
negatively affects the capability of the person’s thinking, comprehending, understanding, feeling
and perceiving can be termed as mental illness (Ilic et al. 2014). The degree of mental illness can
be anywhere between moderate to severe. Nevertheless, any mental state that is perceived as not
normal and hampers the daily lifestyle of the individual must be taken as a mental health
problem and should be treated immediately. There are various forms of mental illnesses and
disorders. A few of the commonly found contemporary mental illnesses are anxiety disorder,
clinical depression, dementia, and bipolar disorder (Corrigan and Kosyluk 2014). External stress
factors, genetic factors, imbalanced biochemical constructs and similar other factors may
contribute towards causing mental illnesses (Ross 2017).
There is a direct relationship between mental and physical health, they are essentially and
fundamentally linked. The World health organization describes and defines health as the state of
wholesome mental, physical and social wellbeing. Just the absence of disease is not equal to
being healthy. Poor and unhealthy mental condition is a catalyst towards chronic physical
disorders (Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi 2014). The relationship of the two factors is vice
versa. In other words, serious mental illnesses can cause chronic physical problems in the victim,
and chronic physical disorders can highly contribute towards deteriorating mental health and
associated complications. Depression has been linked with the rise in risk for heart diseases. It is
often found that anxiety or depression is accompanied with coronary heart diseases (CHD)

3ANXIETY AS A MENTAL HEALTH DISORDER
(Palacios et al. 2016). Anxiety leads to palpitation and increased heart activity, which may lead
to abnormal conditions. On the other hand, depression leads us to take unhealthy choices about
eating, sleeping or other daily necessity activities for the body, which leads to heart
complications. Patients with complication like Schizophrenia have a high problem and risk of
heart and respiratory dysfunction (Partti et al. 2015). In schizophrenia, patients hear voices that
actually do not exist and imagine a controller behind their activities, this leads to depression and
withdrawal from social transactions. Studies have confirmed due to regular stress from the
thought of being controlled such patient often have higher risk of death from heart attacks. In the
case of anxiety, when someone is too anxious, their body puts extra strain and pressure on the
heart functioning (Garfield 2014). Rapid heart rate (tachycardia) is the condition when the
patient feels too much heart palpitation due to fear. The blood pressure of such patients increases
as well. In situations which are stressful the patient suffers from choking voice, this is due to
spasm of throat muscle because the fluids are diverted away to more necessary locations in the
body (Foden 2014). Excessive anxiety causes the adrenal glands to produce abnormal amount of
stress hormonecortisol, which again forces the liver to produce excessive glucose. The liver is
thus affected due to repeated and untreated condition of anxiety or depression, and vice versa.
(Mullish et al. 2014)
Now to focus and understand the measures that the person in the case study taken,
Georgia, can adopt on a medical and personal level in order to start the process of recovery from
the severe mental illness she is suffering from, first a clear understanding about recovery has to
be achieved in the context being discussed. Recovery is usually defined as going back to the
ideal physical or mental condition, which was considered as good, before the complications
started to arrive. In the case of mental illnesses, recovery suggests the process that initiates