Even though depression and anxiety are distinct disorders, in reality they are closely linked together. Research has shown that half of chronic anxiety sufferers also experience depression as a secondary condition and about 60-70% of people suffering from depression have symptoms of anxiety.
A combination of anxiety and depression has some very serious consequences. It interferes with completing tasks at work, affects relationships with other people and makes anxiety depression symptoms a lot more intensive and serious, which substantially raises a risk of suicide. Today the most common age for any anxiety disorder is childhood and early adolescence. People at this age are still vulnerable and yet face lots of risk in everyday life like taking tests, asking for a favour, asking for a date and looking for a job. However, first anxiety depression symptoms can be also developed at the age of 35-40.
In most cases anxiety precedes depression by a few years.
This is why it happens:
A person suffering from anxiety disorder is constantly worried about the future, expecting the worst to happen in the next moment, when there is no actual reason for such worries. Depression adds to anxiety when a person starts thinking, “It is too much for me to handle.”, “I can’t deal with it any more!”, “I give up”. This leads to a “shutdown” marked by mental, emotional and cognitive slowing. One loses interest in activities that previously seemed enjoyable and fun.
There are other noticeable anxiety depression symptoms that if left untreated can lead to serious physical and mental problems. Such symptoms include:
1. Noticeable changes in appetite (poor appetite or overeating) which may lead to significant weight loss or weight gain.
2. Difficulty concentrating that may be related either to the energy drop or slow mind working
3. Troubles falling asleep or sleeping too much
4. Muscle tension and muscle aches
5. Headaches and stomach aches
6. Fatigue caused by energy drop, overwhelming physical anxiety symptoms (like muscle tension, rapid heartbeat, excessive sweating or loss of sleep)
7. Loss of sexual desire/enjoyment
8. Continues feeling of sadness, hopelessness and irritability. All these feelings are usually caused by loss of control over situation and inability to keep up with the basic parts of life (such as household chores, personal care, social activities, work).
9. Feeling of excessive and inappropriate guilt
10. Decrease of self –esteem and feeling of unworthiness
11. Self-consciousness
12. Thoughts of death or feeling suicidal
As you can see the line between anxiety and depression is very thin. Some of anxiety and depression symptoms are very much alike. For example, if a patient if complaining on the loss of appetite, fatigue, muscle tension, loss of sleep and low self-esteem, he might be treated either from anxiety disorder or depression.
The good news is that majority of anxiety depression symptoms are very respondent to different treatments and medications. According to the last statistic about 50% of people, who were treated from anxiety, noticed decrease or complete elimination of depression and vice versa. Besides medications, there are steps people with anxiety depression symptoms can take to improve their stress confrontation capacity. Those self-help techniques include incorporating in daily routine relaxing exercises, healthy diet and more adequate sleeping hours.
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