Georgia Case Study: Understanding Anxiety and Its Impacts on Mental and Physical Health

Running head: GEORGIA CASE STUDY
GEORGIA CASE STUDY
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
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GEORGIA CASE STUDY
Introduction:
Anxiety is one of the most common mental health problem faced by the citizens of the
nation. A case study is provided where a patient named Georgia was showing symptoms of
anxiety and was living poor quality life. This assignment would provide details about anxiety as
a mental disorder and describe is symptoms. It will divide for it unpaved physical health of
patients as well. Moreover, different interventions of the disorder would also be discussed in
details in the assignment.
Understanding of the mental health and mental illness:
Anxiety can be defined as the mental health conditions where the patients suffer from a
type of fear that usually remain associated with the thought of threat or some aspects that would
go wrong in the future. One in every six people in the nation is seen to suffer from the mental
health issues of depression and anxiety (Townsend & Morgan, 2017). The patient named
Georgia is also suffering from anxiety that is making her live poor quality life. People suffering
from anxiety are seen to suffer from a number of symptoms like troubled sleeping, feeling
irritable, lack of concentration, feeling depressed as well as loss of self-confidence (Urden et al,
2017). Similarly, in the case study as well, the patient is seen to have lost confidence in herself
and cannot pass the driving test successfully even when she tried twice to complete the task
successfully. Moreover, she is also having issues with sleeping and cannot sleep properly at
night. She remains awake for a long time and sleeps late at night. Moreover, she has also
developed depression and this is evident from the way by which she avoids social meetings.
Depressed individuals avoid socialization. The patient stated that her mother also suffer from
anxiety issues. Studies are of the opinion that genetics can be a risk factor that results in anxiety.

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GEORGIA CASE STUDY
Anxiety disorders run in families as suggested in studies and some families have higher than
average amount of anxiety issues among relatives. Therefore, the patient might have acquired it
from her mother.
Researchers have categorized different types of anxiety. One of them is the generalized
anxiety disorder. This disorder makes individuals develop regular as well as uncontrollable
worries about many different things in everyday lives of the patients (Coventry et al., 2015).
These worrying attributes can consume several hours of the individuals every day and thereby
makes it hard for the individuals to concentrate or finish daily tasks. Georgio also seems to suffer
from this type of anxiety disorder. This is evident from the fact that although being a full-time
psychology student, she could not complete the tasks on time and always felt anxious that
affected her academic career. Therefore, she had to change it to part time course. Another type of
anxiety issue is the social anxiety disorder. Patients suffering from this disorder experiences
extreme fear or anxiety that are mainly triggered by social situations like parties, workplace or
situations in which they have to work with another person (Sklenarova et al., 2015). Georgia is
also seen to avoid any interactions with her friends and cancel their invitations and therefore, she
can considered to be suffering from the disorder. However, this cannot be understood whether
this symptom is a result from social anxiety disorder or due to feelings of depression that also
make people withdraw themselves from society. Another type of disorder is called the panic
disorder. This actually refers to the situations when individuals suffer from regular or frequent
panic attacks without a clear cause of the feelings or trigger (Kennedy et al., 2016). This is
characterized by sudden feelings of terror sometimes striking repeatedly without warning. Panic
attacks cause symptoms like that of heart attack like chest pain, shortness of breath, dizziness,
stomach upset, heart palpitations and many others (Poulsen et al., 2016). One evident from the

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GEORGIA CASE STUDY
case study also shows that she also faces similar symptoms. She often suffers from similar panic
attack during the time of examinations or during the submission of assignments worrying that
she would fail in the assignments. Hence, she needs to be treated appropriately to help her
overcome anxiety disorders successfully.
Relationship between mental health and the physical health:
Studies have found out that anxiety can result individuals to suffer from many negative
physical aspects. The individuals might suffer from rapid or irregular heartbeat. Individuals
who experience fear and anxiety show irregular heart rate. Bodies are seen to escape from the
feelings of danger or harm and this is achieved by elevation of the heart rate and increasing the
force of each beat that occurs during atrial fibrillation. Georgia also faces similar pounding of
heartbeat when she faces anxiety attacks. Individuals are also seen to suffer from fast breathing.
They also suffer from weakened or tensed muscles and suffer from sweating. Dry mouth and
dizziness are also two other physical impacts that people might suffer from due to anxiety. Long-
term anxiety as well as panic attacks can affect the central nervous system making the brain to
release stress hormones on the regular basis (Huffman et al., 2014). This indeed is responsible
for increasing the symptoms of dizziness, depression as well as headaches. A feeling of
churning stomach and loose bowels are also seen to be the result of anxiety issues in patients. In
case of Georgia, it was found that she had fast breathing rate and this was measured for about
22 breaths per minute. Normal persons have respiration rate between 12 and 20 breaths. Studies
are of the opinion that anxiety can help in triggering a flight or fight stress and thereby causes
release of flood of chemical and hormones that might include adrenaline into the system. This is
mainly responsible for increasing the pulse and breathing rate for making the brain get more
oxygen. Often people also suffer from sleep issues. Different sources of stress and feelings of