Generalized Anxiety Disorder
What is Generalized Anxiety Disorder?
Everyone worries, but people with generalized anxiety disorder worry more persistently and are overly concerned about things like health, money, work or school, natural disasters and relationships. Chronic worry and stress have been associated with intolerance of uncertainty, thinking what you don’t know could hurt you. People with generalized worry tend to spend excessive time trying to plan and predict what could go wrong to prevent bad things from happening.
Common symptoms experienced with people with generalized anxiety are:
- Difficulty sleeping
- Difficulty concentrating
- Frequent stomach aches and/or headaches
- Muscle tension
- Fatigue
- Irritability
Children with generalized worry are often concerned about their grades, getting in trouble of school and the health of their parents or themselves. They are often very sensitive to things they hear on the news and will worry about natural disasters or crime.
Cognitive-behavior therapy is an effective treatment for chronic worry and stress, helping them learn to tolerate uncertainty and live more rich and fulfilling lives.
