DEFINITION:
The term “anxiety” refers to an inner feeling of disturbance, worry, or dread. Along with corresponding physical and behavioral symptoms, anxiety is a major manifestation of many mental illnesses. Anxiety is akin to fear but is a distinct emotional state.
Anxiety is future-oriented, long-standing, and unfocused, untethered from any specific threats. In contrast, fear is present-oriented, transient, and focused on particular threats.
ETYMOLOGY:
The English word “anxiety” is attested from the sixteenth century. It derives from the Latin noun anxietas, anxietatis, which is related to the adjective, anxius, meaning “uneasy” or “anxious.”
DISCUSSION:
Anxiety is a syndrome of emotional states and behavioral patterns associated with various types of mental illnesses. When anxiety itself is the most-prominent presenting symptom, a diagnosis of “anxiety disorder” may be in order.
Like fear, anxiety is capable of triggering the “fight-or-flight” response. For this reason, it is intimately linked to many physical symptoms affecting as many as seven separate organ systems:
- Nervous system: headaches, vertigo, light-headedness
- Digestive system: nausea, abdominal pain, diarrhea
- Respiratory system: shortness of breath
- Cardiovascular system: palpitations, tachycardia, chest pain
- Musculo-skeletal system: fatigue, tremors
- Integumentary system: itching, perspiration
- Urinary-reproductive system: urinary urgency, impotence, chronic pelvic pain syndrome