1 marzo 2016
The spreading of the anxiety- depression sympthoms during the adolescence must not be underestimated since it can be a highly disabling problem that involves different aspects of the adolescents' life and their life at school as well.
First we need to underline that the adolescence is an uncertain age mainly related to the complex physical and psychological evolution and it is not the most dangerous part in everyone's life when the most serious types of anxiety can appear. Anyway the young adults who are growing may suffer from anxiety. It's also true thay they very often experience their anxiety without recognizing it. The girls and the students who experience painful situations like the parents's separation may develop these sympthoms more easily and also the ones who have experienced previous school failures or bullying problems.
So what is anxiety? How can we realize our child or one of our students suffers from it?
The anxiety is a type of reaction towards someone or something (a situation) which the individual often feels as a danger. Well, we said “feels”, not it's. The individual's point of view which is influenced by the progress, by the innate and the environmental factors is very important.
The anxiety is strictly related to the biochemical substances that concern the level of the blood's neurotransmitters. From a psychological point of view the anxiety can be overwhelming for the individual who suffers from it: the anxious adolescent feels a growing reduction of his/her mnestic abilities as well as a reduction of his/her imagination so they can enter into a crisis regarding their future.
The different types of anxiety aren't all pathological. There is a physiological type of anxiety that is related to particularly stressful situations that doesn't undermine the quality of the daily routine. It can be an episode related to an event that can be overcome without many dificulties.
The anxiety disorder is an illness whose origin is heterogeneous as its case studies. The anxiety is not the fear since there isn't any specific, objective reasons to be fearful. The anxiety hits the adolescents, they can't explain the reasons, they can't recognize the cause. They say they are afraid but they don't know why. The reasons can be hidden in their past experiences or in a traumatic event that marked their pats life and they can often appear again in the form of anxiety after many years and become psychosomatic problems.
The adolescents suffer from the general anxiet disorder (DAG). It's a cronic disorder that mainly hits the adolescents. In general the girls show the anxiety symptjoms while the boys tend to hide them since they are considered the expressions of a weak personality. The general anxiety disorder is mainly related to the anxious feelings that are not related to specific situations although they affect the daily life. The individuals who suffer from this disorder often talk about distress and fear without knowing the reason for that. Their muscles are always tense, they suffer from headache, dizziness, palpitations, sleeping problems, loss of appetite, nausea, irritability. The adolescents who suffer from the DAG can't focus on what they are doing and they can't even perform easy calculations. They get often tired, they sweat a lot so the quality of their daily life becomes really poor. As a consequence they are always worried. If these sympthoms continue for more than six months you can get a diagnosis of DAG. Very often these problems may also start during the pre-adolescence and very often the parents tend to underestimate them since they think they are just the way their children behave. But in the most serious cases this disorder can evn lead to suicide in case it is ignored. The most effective therapeutic approach is the cognitive-behavioural one.
There is another type of disorder related to the anxiety wehich is spread among the adolescents: it's the DAP, the disorder related to the panic attacks. These episodes last for a few seconds but they sound never-ending, they are not related to specific situations. They sudden appear, you cannot control them and the fear is awful. The people who suffer from this disorder can't breathe, they feel dizzy, they have got pain in their chest, they sweat or shiver, they cant' stand, they want to run away. So the quality of the daily life is endangered, these students don't want to go to school anymore, they don't want to meet friends. Their mind is frozen, they are frightened. It's rellay difficult to help these adolescents to restart a normal life since they are always afreaid to experience these panic attacks when they least expect it. Since they might occur during the night while they are sleeping, they can occur more than once in a day. Although it may seem paradoxical the panic attack, especially in a depressing situation, is a sort of reaction to a painful situation, it's a way to run away from an unacceptable reality. The most effective therapeutic approach is the cognitive-behavioural one in this case too.
