POWER OVER PANIC: ANXIETY DISORDERS
Panic disorder; generalised anxiety disorder; post traumatic stress disorder; obsessive compulsive disorder; and social phobia are classified as anxiety disorders. Anxiety disorders affect 12.6% per cent of the population over a twelve-month period (Andrews 1994). Research suggests anxiety disorders represent the largest mental health problem in the general population (APA 1980). Using the current Australian population figure of 18 million (ABS 1995), this means that 2.2 million people are affected by these disorders. The age of onset of the disorders is usually between the late teens and the mid thirties, although they have begun in childhood and as late as seventy.
Central to the anxiety disorders are the experience of panic attacks. Until the introduction in 1994 of three separate and distinct types of panic attacks (APA 1994), all panic attacks were considered one and the same. The introduction of these three categories is a major step forward in the understanding of the subjective experience of these attacks.
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