Anxiety Disorders Anxiety disorders affect about 40 million American adults age 18 years or older in a given year. (NIMH 2013) Anxiety disorder were first recognized in1980, but have been around since the beginning of humanity. What is anxiety? Anxiety is a normal human emotion that surfaces, whether they are facing problems at home or work or getting ready to take a test. Anxiety disorders is the anxiety last more than six months and is defined as an umbrella for other for other types of disorders that interfere with a person’s ability to live a normal life by constant and overwhelming fear or worry. How do we treat anxiety disorder? We can treat it by medication or psychotherapy. Psychotherapy is a way to treat people with a mental disorder by helping them understand their illness. It teaches people strategies and gives them tools to deal with stress and unhealthy thoughts and behaviors. Psychotherapy helps patients manage their symptoms better and function at their best in everyday life. (NIMH 2013). There are several different types of anxiety disorder which include phobias, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorders, just to name a few of them. Anxiety is the symptom that alerts the doctors to other underlying disorders or problems. General symptoms are feelings of panic, fear, uneasiness, nightmares, shortness of breath, and heart palpitations. Post-traumatic stress disorder is an anxiety disorder characterized by haunting memories, nightmares, social withdrawal, and or insomnia lingering four weeks or more after a traumatic experience. (Myers 2009). Also known as PTSD, this anxiety disorder you see in people who are survivors of sexual assaults or been a part of the war. PTSD affects a person social life, as well as, their personal life. Some people with PTSD relieve their experiences over and over again affecting so much that they have to be hospitalized and medicated just to cope day to day. PTSD can be treated with medication and with psychotherapy. Obsessive-compulsive disorder is an anxiety disorder characterized by unwanted repetitive thoughts (obsessions) and or actions (compulsions). (Myers 2009). Someone with obsessive-compulsive disorder takes something like thinking about cleaning and turns it into a compulsion by cleaning and cleaning over and over again. It becomes so much that it interferes with their wellbeing because if they are so busy doing something over and over again it begins effecting the person on a mental level. Think about it if you think about washing your hair over and over again then it turns into a compulsion you constantly washing your hair could result in your hair falling out.