Case Study on "Symptoms and Treatment"

Case Study 4 pages (1164 words) Sources: 6

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Anxiety Disorder

Case Study in Anxiety Disorders

In the current case study, an adult female patient has presented with a range of episodic symptoms which included sweating, trembling, nausea, palpitations and chest pains. These symptoms have typically accompanied feelings of overwhelming anxiety and dread. The subject, Marge, also reported experiencing elevated stress due to her husband Homer's recent difficulties at work.

Diagnosis:

Marge visited her General Practitioner indicating a fear that she might be suffering from a chronic heart condition. All evidence in her case suggests, however, that Marge is more likely suffering from an anxiety disorder with stress that may be increasing in its severity. Anxiety disorders can vary widely in their severity and the frequency of related episodes. However, in most cases, the recurrence of these episodes is stimulated by the kind of elevated stress that Marge has been experiencing. According to WebMD, "Anxiety disorders . . . can cause such distress that it interferes with a person's ability to lead a normal life. An anxiety disorder is a serious mental illness. For people with anxiety disorders, worry and fear are constant and overwhelming, and can be crippling."(p. 1) This diagnosis appears to accurately characterize Marge's experiences.

Biological Mechanisms:

With respect to the biological mechanisms which play a role in the nature of the anxiety disorder, medical research has increasingly come to suggest that there may be a specific chemical disorder which makes individuals especially susceptible to anxiety attacks and other stress-related episodes. In Marge's case, though her suddenly high occurrence of episodes appears to have been triggered by elevated stress levels relating to Homer's difficulties at work, it is in fact likely that a latent anxiety disorder has given her a higher predisposition for said episodes. According to the text by Dratcu (2000), anxiety attacks may actually be stimulated by a combination of the elevated carbon dioxide levels in the brain caused by higher stress levels and the presence of uniquely sensitive CO2 chemocreceptors. According to the study by Dratcu, "evidence from provocation studies using lactate, but particularly carbon dioxide (CO2) mixtures, suggests that panic patients may have hypersensitive CO2 chemoreceptors. Klein proposed that PD may be due to a dysfunctional brain's suffocation alarm and that panic patients hyperventilate to keep pCO2 low." (p. 1069)

This means that the anxiety attack is the result of abnormally functioning stress-coping mechanisms in the brain. Consequently, as the body begins to endure symptoms that resemble a massive coronary event, as has been the case with Marge, the brain magnifies these symptoms causing the subject to perceive an impending heart attack. Indeed, as the text by Smith et al. (2012) indicates, it is quite common for the sufferer of such attacks to mistake these incidences for symptoms of a heart condition or other catastrophic medical problem. According to Smith & Segal, this does create a critical imperative for the subject to seek the proper treatment. The article by Smith & Segal reports that "anxiety attacks usually peak within ten minutes, and they rarely last more than thirty minutes. But during that short time, the terror can be so severe that you feel as if you're about to die or totally lose control. The physical symptoms of anxiety attacks are themselves so frightening that many people believe they're having a heart attack. After an anxiety attack is over, you may be worried about having another one, particularly in a public place where help isn't available or you can't easily escape." (p. 1) This denotes… READ MORE

How to Reference "Symptoms and Treatment" Case Study in a Bibliography

Related Papers:

Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms and Symptom Management in the Combat Veteran Capstone Project

Posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has been recognized by a growing number of healthcare authorities and U.S. governmental agencies as a serious and potentially debilitating condition in combat veterans returning from… read more

Capstone Project 35 pages (9747 words) Sources: 50 Style: APA Topic: Psychology / Behavior / Psychiatry

---

Treatment of Women Diagnosed With Dysthymia Term Paper

Treatment of Women Diagnosed With Dysthymia

This proposal for a clinical case study of the treatment of a woman diagnosed with dysthymia employs a cognitive behavioral approach to identifying effective… read more

Term Paper 48 pages (13264 words) Sources: 1+ Topic: Psychology / Behavior / Psychiatry

---

Treatment of Co-Occurring Disorders Term Paper

Treatment of Co-Occurring Disorders

The simultaneous presence of both mental illness and a substance abuse disorder in a single individual, known as "co-occurring disorders" (CODs), has become the focus of… read more

Term Paper 10 pages (2880 words) Sources: 7 Style: APA Topic: Drugs / Alcohol / Tobacco

---

Treatment Approaches to Autism Term Paper

Treatment Approaches to Autism

The purpose of this paper is to introduce and analyze the topic of autism. Specifically it will discuss the disease and treatment approaches to the disease.… read more

Term Paper 8 pages (2599 words) Sources: 10 Style: APA Topic: Disease / Virus / Disorder / Injury

---

Treatments for Rosacea Research Paper

Rosacea Treatments

Rosacea: Causes, Symptoms, and Treatments

Imagine having a flushed face all the time, at those most inconvenient moments where you do not want to look like Santa Clause… read more

Research Paper 2 pages (752 words) Sources: 5 Topic: Medicine / Pharmacy

---

View 100+ more related papers  >>