Neurotic Anxiety Disorder
While persons the world over suffer from a variety of anxiety-based disorders, neurotic anxiety disorder represents the most common of all mental disorders. A neurosis means a mental disorder in which particular situations cause irrational anxiety and distress. Neuroses can affect a person's life in many forms, and neurotic anxiety disorder includes many of them.
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Neuroses
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Neuroses can impair daily functioning in persons with neurotic anxiety disorder (NAD), since sufferers typically aim to avoid situations that pique their neurosis. A person with NAD is generally aware of reality, but has a fear of an object or situation (a phobia), fear of harm if he doesn't complete a ritual (obsessive-compulsive disorder, or OCD), or fear of illness (hypochondriasis) among other neuroses. Other NAD patients experience dissociate disorder, or slipping into a trance; a generalized anxiety disorder; or insomnia, mental fatigue and a sense of instability (neurasthenia).
Causes
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Psychologists have yet to pinpoint a specific cause for NAD or other neurotic disorders. Symptoms of NAD manifest themselves as an unconscious psychological conflict that, while unacceptable to others, is acceptable to the patient's concept of himself. The sufferer usually subconsciously defends himself against the deeper conflict that presents itself as NAD so that it doesn't enter into his awareness.
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Diagnosis
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NAD sufferers are almost always diagnosed from a set of symptoms that develop, such as skin disorders, high blood pressure, dry mouth, twitching, headaches, sweating, nausea, insomnia and impotence. Such physical symptoms cannot lead to a specific NAD diagnosis without a psychological examination that takes the patient's orientation, dress, mannerisms, behavior and speech into account. The examination also considers talk of feelings associated with undesirable or harmful fears, nightmares and memory problems.
Treatment
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Psychotherapy is usually recommended for NAD patients who wish to bring their unconscious conflicts into consciousness, develop coping skills and generally talk through their problems. If talk therapy isn't enough, anti-anxiety medication may be prescribed. Common medications for treating NAD include Effexor, Paxil, Luvox, Klonopin, Xanax and Valium.
Controversy
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The term "neurosis" has been controversial since Dr. William Cullen of Scotland coined it in 1769 in reference to "disorders of sense and motion" caused by a "general affection of the nervous system." It used to be a catch-all term encompassing all mental imbalances that caused distress without preventing rational thought. The controversy comes in the derivation of the word "neurosis" from its Greek roots of "neuron," or nerve, and "osis," meaning a diseased or abnormal condition. Historically, "neurosis" has been used in the study of psychology to describe many disorders that have since been separated into their own disorders, including anxiety and depression.
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