Getting A Second Opinion
If you’re unhappy or want to confirm that the advice or support you were given was correct, you can ask for a second opinion from another GP or a specialist. It is your right to see a GP who you feel is competent to deal with your case. You can also make an appointment with another GP in the practice, or change practice altogether if your GP refuses to arrange a second opinion for you.
Sometimes seeing a different doctor can make all the difference.
‘When I first became ill and went to the GP with whom I was registered, he was useless and unsympathetic. I was advised by a friend to see a different GP in my practice. WOW, what a difference. Right from the start he listened, empathised gave me the time and support I needed when I was scared and confused and referred me to the correct mental health service.’ – Edith
Diagnosing Anxiety Disorders In Adults
Anxiety is a normal reaction to stress that most people experience throughout their lives. A person may feel anxious when speaking in public, taking a test, or making an important life decision. But if the anxiety is more than temporary worry or fear, does not go away, or worsens over time, this may be a sign of an anxiety disorder.
NYU Langone specialists offer expert diagnosis of anxiety disorders, which are common mental health conditions that can interfere with daily activities, affecting your performance at work and school as well as your relationships.
If you experience any symptoms of an anxiety disorder, see your doctor or a mental health specialist, such as a psychiatrist, psychologist, or licensed clinical social worker.
To diagnose an anxiety disorder, a doctor performs a physical exam, asks about your symptoms, and recommends a blood test, which helps the doctor determine if another condition, such as hypothyroidism, may be causing your symptoms.
The doctor may also ask about any medications you are taking. Certain medications may cause symptoms of anxiety. These include levodopa, a medication used to manage Parkinsons disease, and cyclosporine, an immunosuppressant used to prevent the progression of rheumatoid arthritis and psoriasis.
If the doctor does not find an underlying cause of the symptoms, he or she performs a psychological evaluation.
Ii How We Chose The Best Online Doctors For Anxiety Treatment And Prescriptions
Consumers can choose from a growing number of telemedicine and telepsychiatry options that focus on treating anxiety. The best providers typically offer convenient appointments, short wait times, multiple consultation options, and individualized care. These criteria generally result in higher satisfaction ratings. Although online doctors are more affordable than their local counterparts, we included providers at various price points, including options for patients with and without insurance.
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How Do You Know Its Anxiety
For starters, with anxiety you feel it in your mind and your body. Sometimes people notice things like a fast heartbeat and think theyre having a heart issue. Other physical symptoms could be:
- Nervousness
- Confusion
- Indecision
And, whats tricky is things like obsessing can actually be rewarded, so you might not focus on the fact that its harming your overall wellbeing.
Anxiety may also have behavioral manifestations, as people may cope with anxiety with more or less adaptive responses. For example, some people tend to withdraw when anxious, behave aggressively, or self-medicate with drugs and alcohol, all of which may worsen the problem, Dr. Brenner says.
When its severe, anxiety may become panic, accompanied by a strong sense of fear, or manifest as specific fears or phobias.
What Types Of Medication May Be Prescribed
For short-term management of anxiety, benzodiazepines are often prescribed as the first line of defense, but these are not usually appropriate for long-term use due to concerns about dependency, lack of effectiveness, and adverse reactions. Common benzodiazepines include Ativan, Valium, Xanax, and Klonopin. They act as a sedative by enhancing the tranquilizing effects of the neurotransmitter GABA by slowing down activity in the brain and reducing the symptoms of anxiety.
They take effect more quickly than the antidepressant medications often prescribed for anxiety. But there are drawbacks. You can build up a tolerance to them if they are taken over a long period of time and then you need a higher dose to get the same effect. Some people may even become dependent on them.
Selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors and serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors are a mainstay treatment for anxiety and considered an effective treatment for all anxiety disorders.
Additional classes of medications including tricyclic antidepressants and mood stabilizers may be used when anxiety is harder to treat.
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What Type Of Doctor To See
If you believe you have benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, your family practitioner will be able to make this diagnosis. Describe the situation. Dont just say, I feel dizzy.
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A hallmark feature of BPPV is that the patient feels the dizziness only when they move their head.
For example, youre busy at your computer. Your head is not moving left to right because your eyes are glued to the screen. All is fine.
You then turn your head 90 degrees to the right to grab your coffee mugand you feel a wave of dizziness.
The room may seem to shift a little, but this isnt always the case. Sometimes with benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, you feel only that annoying dizziness.
For some patients this disappears when they lie down. For others it gets worse. Often, rising from a lying position will trigger the dizziness.
If they close their eyes while feeling the dizziness, they may feel a sensation of their body or the room spinning about.
In severe cases, the symptoms can be way out of proportion to the benignity of this disorder.
Intense dizziness, especially accompanied by vomiting, will be frightening to someone who doesnt realize this is due to those canaliths.
So if BPPV sounds like what you have, see your general doctor. If your symptoms dont quite fit this benign type of vertigo, you should still first see your primary care doctor.
Your Anxiety Is Harming Your Physical Well
Occasional anxious thoughts may cause more mental stress than physical symptoms. However, if you have an anxiety disorder, you will likely experience physical symptoms that sap your energy and interfere with your daily functioning. These signs could include sleeping troubles, unexplained muscle aches and digestive issues.
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How Should You Prepare For Follow Up Mental Health Appointments
Keeping symptom logs and doing homework may be a useful part of some forms of therapy. Its helpful to keep track of sleep, irritability, anxiety, behavioral problems, functional disturbances and timing, duration, and triggers of symptoms, Dr. Brenner says. You can try an app like Daylio or IMood Journal. Or, if you dont want to have a digital record of your every mood, go old-school with a downloadable worksheet.
If youre thinking about online therapy, read this article on how to maximize your appointments and what to expect.
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What Kinds Of Questions Can You Expect From A Therapist
In order to gauge how youre feeling and the severity of your symptoms, your doctor might ask any of the following questions:
- What are your symptoms and how are they impacting day-to-day life?
- When did your symptoms start and how long have they lasted?
- Does anything trigger your anxiety or make it worse?
- Do you have a family history of anxiety or other mental health conditions?
- Are you currently taking any medications?
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How Can I Be Diagnosed With Anxiety Disorder
There are no lab tests to tell whether or not you have an anxiety disorder.
If you have physical symptoms such as those above, the doctor may run some tests on you, mainly to make sure that you are not having a condition that mimics anxiety . If the doctor determines that your symptoms are not due to an obvious physical cause, he may refer you to a psychologist.
The psychologist will then start a chit chat with you. The topics will range from your own life, to your family and how you feel. A mental state examination will be conducted where clues are gleaned from the way you look, talk and dress. All these information will help us come to a better conclusion about what is bothering you.
How do I know how severe I am?
Depending on how often during the last 2 weeks you have been bothered by the following problems, you may be deemed to have either mild, moderate or severe anxiety.
It is definitely severe if you start to have suicidal ideas.
Preparing For Your Appointment
Before the appointment it might be helpful to write down what you’d like to talk about to make sure that you don’t forget anything. Take a few minutes before the appointment to write up a list of things you might want to bring up.
Write down any symptoms of how you’re feeling and how your mood might be affecting you day-to-day life.
Write down key personal information, including upsetting events in your past and any current major stressful events.
Make a list of your medical information, including other physical or mental health conditions and the names and amounts of medications, herbal remedies or supplements you take.
Feel free to take a family member or friend along to your appointment for support if it will help you feel more at ease.
Write down a list of questions to ask. These may include:
- what type of mental health problem might I have?
- why can’t I get over my mental health problem on my own?
- how do you treat my type of mental illness?
- will counselling or psychotherapy help?
- are there medications that might help?
- how long will treatment take?
- what can I do to help myself?
- do you have any brochures or other printed material that I can have?
- what websites do you recommend?
In addition to the questions that you’ve prepared, don’t hesitate to ask questions to your GP if you don’t understand something.
You aren’t alone
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Types Of Anxiety Disorders
The symptom of feeling constant fear and worry is shared among the major types of anxiety disorders.
Panic attacks, which represent an extreme form of anxiety, can occur with most of these anxiety disorders, though they are not typically associated with generalised anxiety disorder .
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What is Generalised anxiety disorder ?
It is an excessive anxiety and worry about a variety of topics, events, or activities . Patients have difficulty controlling the worry, and experience symptoms such as restlessness, feeling tired easily, impaired concentration or feeling as though the mind goes blank, irritability, increased muscle aches or soreness, and sleep disturbance.
The anxiety, worry or associated symptoms make it hard to carry out day-to-day activities. This may cause problems in relationships, at work or other important areas.
The ultimate list of symptoms of a Panic Attack
A panic attack is an sudden surge of intense fear or discomfort that reaches a peak within minutes. You might feel the following:
- Palpitations where you feel that the heart is racing or skipping a beat
- A pounding heart
Panic disorders are characterised by the experience of recurrent, unexpected panic attacks.
Obsessive-compulsive disorder
OCD is no longer classified under anxiety disorders under the newer DSM-5.
To learn more about OCD, you can refer to our article about it.
Post-traumatic stress disorder
Social phobia
Specific phobias
Finding The Right Kind Of Doctor For Your Depression
To make sure you find a doctor or therapist who will place you on the right track for depression management, use this checklist:
1. Choose someone who can provide the desired services.
2. Make sure that a strong relationship is felt.
3. Find out about the approach to therapy for the client.
4. Find a collaborative plan for your goals.
5. Look for someone who is going to challenge you.
6. Seeking someone with a direct approach to treatment.
7. Expect homework.
In this article, we listed out what kind of doctor do you see for depression.
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Consider First Seeing A Psychiatrist
For certain new patients, there is a tendency to see a counselor or psychologist rather than a doctor for their initial mental health assessment. For certain people, this can be helpful, particularly if your case is not serious, but its sometimes not enough for others.
Health doctors are mostly just psychiatrists, which means they are qualified to administer drugs.
If your depression comes from a chemical imbalance, it wont be enough to treat you with talk therapy. Its better to see a doctor for your first visit, who can also prescribe drugs and give you psychotherapy if appropriate. This two-pronged drug and talk therapy approach are also the most helpful to patients.
Psychotherapy is a general term for a range of different verbal and therapeutic methods that are used through their mental health disorder or cause of underlying stress to help a person function. Psychoanalytic counseling, occupational therapy, cognitive therapy, and cognitive behavioral therapy are but are not limited to these strategies . Often, other practitioners in the area of mental health, such as psychologists and social workers, will rely on psychotherapeutic approaches and use them on their clients.
If your doctor is eligible to give you psychotherapy services, dont be surprised if, while focusing on fine-tuning your prescription, they refer you to a clinical psychologist, therapist, or certified mental health counselor.
Why Do I Have Anxiety
What causes anxiety and anxiety disorders is complex. It is likely that a combination of both genetics and environmental factors play a role in why some individuals are more prone to anxiety than others. Some events, emotions, or experiences may make it more likely for the symptoms of anxiety to begin or worsenthese are known as triggers. Anxiety triggers can cause panic attacks in some people and differ from person to person and so working with a mental health professional to identify what your triggers are and how you can react when faced with them can be incredibly helpful.
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Difference Between Psychiatrist And Psychologist
Between psychiatrists and psychologists, the three major differences are:
- Psychiatrists are doctors of medicine, not psychologists.
- Psychiatrists prescribe medications, but psychologists cant.
- Psychiatrists diagnose depression, administer recovery, and include a number of nuanced and extreme mental illness treatments. In order to support people, psychiatrists concentrate on delivering psychotherapy .
Many individuals are mistaken for each other by therapists and psychologists.
Psychiatrists and psychologists both understand how the brain, our feelings, emotions, and thoughts function. With psychiatric therapies, both can heal mental illness .
However, prior to doing professional training in mental health, psychiatrists attend medical school and become medical practitioners. Psychiatrists understand the connection between psychiatric and physical conditions because they are physicians. They can prescribe drugs as well.