Coping with Depression and Anxiety

Anxiety disorders affect millions of Americans every year. These individuals can take any number of pathways to start coping with anxiety. Let’s discuss some of the main pluses and drawbacks of each form of anxiety treatment generally available.

The most common method treating anxiety is through medications prescribed by a mental health specialist. Generally the benzodiazepines are the most common prescribed anti-anxiety drugs, including klonopin and Valium. These drugs are effective at alleviating acute anxiety. However they are not nearly as effective in dealing with chronic anxiety. The main disadvantage of benzodiazepines is that they are terribly addicting and have a horrible withdrawal syndrome associated with them. So if you do start on a course of these medications you will have to continue to take them daily to have any effect and you will experience severe withdrawal symptoms if you stop taking them. Because of this you should take pause before continuing.

The next option is to begin therapy with a trained psychotherapist. There are several advantages and disadvantages of this method as well. One unfortunate truth about therapy is that it, on its own, is probably not going to grant you a lot of relief from your symptoms. Still, time spent with a therapist can contribute to coming up with new strategies for combating your anxiety. Therapy also is not likely to result in an anxiety cure.

The greatest disadvantage to therapy is that most therapists do not suffer from severe anxiety disorders. So while they can be great at talking theories they don’t really have first hand knowledge about what it takes to break free from an anxiety disorder. They do however undergo a lot of training in order to obtain their license. In general, the profession has a ways to go to improve itself in the treatment of anxiety.

Another method to get treatment for your anxiety disorder is to check into an inpatient hospital. This type of inpatient treatment can be very helpful if your anxiety is crippling to the point that you are unable to function in life. It can be especially helpful if you are contemplating suicide or harming yourself.The main thrust of inpatient treatment is to teach individuals new coping skills so that they will not consider suicide. In this way the treatment options provided by an inpatient clinic are usually not very precise for dealing with more subtle forms of anxiety.

The main therapy employed by psychiatric hospitals is called DBT or dialectical behavioral therapy. DBT teaches simple distress management techniques and mindfulness therapy. For individuals who lack skills to succeed in life and are contemplating suicide, DBT can be extremely successful. If you have a more refined condition then you will get very little out of this form of treatment.

Finally, in patient treatment can be very expensive. A decent clinic runs at least $750 a day and if you do not have insurance the cost becomes prohibitive. Still if you are close to taking your life and need the immediate intervention then an inpatient psychiatric clinic may be your best bet.

Those are three of the main methods for treating anxiety disorders. If you want to start overcoming anxiety you may want to consider one of these options.