Assessment
Assessing that a person has anxiety disorder there are some must step that should imply to make a validated diagnosis.
- First thing that needs to be done is to take detailed history by interviewing the client and try to understand the origin from where the anxiety triggers like whether some substance abuse cause it, any hormone issues, some chronic disease, or any other environmental factor.
- Make a good observation, have a mental status examination, and investigate if some other difficulties appear in a person’s daily living because of the disorder.
- Take a history from the family members too, but only when the client agrees to it. Always consider cultural factors too.
4. Have a psychiatric history from a client like how intense his anxiety could ever go, how many episodes he has experienced, and how he calms himself up.
5. Make sure that the client didn’t engage himself in any self-harm activity while having anxiety attacks.
6. For examining the symptoms consider the DSM₋ 5 for the diagnostic criteria.
7. There are some other self-measured tools available too that are used by professionals to measure the severity of anxiety such as the Beck Anxiety Inventory and State-Trait Anxiety Inventory
8. Baseline (helps evaluate the post and pre-progress) and Rating charts are also used as assessment tools.
Treatment
For the sake of treatment, cognitive behavioral therapy and behavioral therapy work together. Some techniques of cognitive therapy are the following.
Self-awareness and monitoring
In this technique, the client is being taught to monitor their thoughts. The therapist gives his client a data gathering form that includes what triggers the thought, what behavior you exhibit, how you feel, how intense the thought was, and how you calm yourself. The technique upskills the self-dependency of the client.
Relaxation Technique
It includes deep breathing and progressive muscles technique. The client is instructed to do these while facing the anxious situation to remain pacific.
Worry outcome of dairy
Here person writes about his worry. A pen is given to the person and asks him to write down his worry either big or small in the given time. A maximum of five minutes is assigned to the client and after that therapist asks him to go through each worry and find its origin.
Stimulus control program
It involved four instructions first Learn to identify worrisome thoughts and other thoughts that are unnecessary or unpleasant. Separate these thoughts or think of something optimal regarding the present moment. Then Establish a half-hour worry period to take place at the same time and in the same location each day. When you capture yourself worrying just delay the worry, keep that negative thought for think in your specific worry time, and put back your thought process to the present moment. Make sure you utilize half an hour of worry time to just think about your problems and indulge yourself in sorting your concerns.
Normalizing
Keep sending yourself the message that it is normal to be anxious or feel in a certain way. Always give yourself chances to grow.
Exposure therapy
It is a behavioral therapy technique to get exposed to the situation, either in chunks or as a whole. It can involve virtual reality, Vivo, or imaginal exposure therapy.