What is an Anxiety Attack, Panic Attack & Panic Disorder?
An anxiety attack or panic attack is often a result of excessive worrying about every day things such as your job, your family, health, friends or other seemingly routine occurrences in your life.
For individuals suffering from a panic attack or anxiety attack, brief episodes of intense fear are accompanied by multiple physical symptoms (such as heart palpitations and dizziness) that occur repeatedly and unexpectedly in the absence of any external threat. These "panic attacks," which are the hallmark of panic disorder, are believed to occur when the brain's normal mechanism for reacting to a threat – the so-called "fight or flight" response – becomes inappropriately aroused. Most people with panic disorder also feel anxious about the possibility of having another panic attack and avoid situations in which they believe these attacks are likely to occur. Anxiety about another attack, and the avoidance it causes, can lead to disability. If left untreated, you may actually begin to have anxiety about having a panic or anxiety attack in public. This may lead to an even more severe condition known as agoraphobia.
One in four individuals will experience an anxiety attack or panic attack at some time in their lives. In the United States, 1.6 percent of the adult population, or more than 3 million people, will go on to develop a panic disorder. The disorder typically begins in young adulthood, but older people and children can be affected. Women are affected with anxiety attacks twice as frequently as men. While people of all races and social classes can have panic disorder, there appear to be cultural differences in how individual symptoms are expressed.
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