Condition : Panic disorder

Condition Panic disorder

What is panic disorder?

If you regularly experience sudden episodes of extreme stress (panic attacks), and often for no clear reason, you may have panic disorder.

Panic disorder is a type of anxiety disorder, which is when feelings of stress, fear, or worry become difficult to control and affect your everyday life.

During a panic attack, you will get a rush of intense mental and physical symptoms, such as:

faster, irregular, or more noticeable heartbeat (palpitations)
feeling faint or dizzy
nausea or being sick
breathlessness or a choking sensation
chest pain
trembling or shaking
hot flushes or chills
numbness or pins and needles
a feeling of dread or a fear of dying
feeling like you’re not connected to your body (dissociation)

Most panic attacks last between 5 and 20 minutes and won’t cause your physical harm, although they are frightening. If you have panic disorder, the frequency of attacks can range from once or twice a month to several times a week.

Having a panic attack due to a phobia trigger does not mean you have panic disorder.

A phobia is another type of anxiety disorder that can cause panic attacks. They often develop because of an event that caused a lot of stress – usually during childhood.

With phobias, the trigger of a panic attack will be a specific object, animal, situation, or place, whereas if you have panic disorder there will often be no clear reason for your panic attacks.

The experience of having a panic attack can lead to avoidance behaviours that resemble a phobia.

It is common to have more than one type of anxiety disorder, so alongside panic disorder you could have:

generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) – often feeling very anxious about lots of different things
social anxiety disorder (also known as social phobia) – a fear of social situations
agoraphobia – a fear of being in situations, such as on a bus or in a crowd, where help or an easy escape might not be available

What causes panic disorder?

Anxiety disorders, such as panic disorder, trigger our ‘fight, flight, or freeze’ response which is designed to protect us in dangerous situations.

It’s not fully understood what causes anxiety disorders, though it’s believed that a mixture of things can trigger them, including:

an event that caused a lot of stress
genetics (having a close family member who has an anxiety disorder)
an imbalance of neurotransmitters (chemical messengers) in the brain

Some of the symptoms of panic attacks can also be symptoms of other problems, such as low blood pressure, so it’s important to let your GP know so they can run tests to ensure you get the right help.

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