WORRIED SICK

Anxiety is the most common form of mental illness. Everyone worries sometimes, and there’s certainly a lot to fret about these days, but how do you differentiate mental, even healthy fears from those that are irrational or destructive?

In small doses, “worry and anxiety are adaptive,” says Michael First, M.D., Columbia University’s college of Physicians and Surgeons. “Nobody would study for a test if it weren’t for anxiety. But when it goes from something that motivates you to something that interferes with your life so you can’t concentrate or make you avoid social situations – that’s when you might need help. The good news is that there are many effective treatments for anxiety. No solution works for everyone and often requires trial and error, and more than a little patience.

The psychology sections of bookstores are filled with titles like “From Panic to Power: Proven Techniques to Calm Your Anxieties, Conquer Your Fears, and Put You in Control of Your Life, and, yes, “Overcoming Anxiety for Dummies.”

Anxiety often triggers depression, and it appears to increase the risk of other health problems like asthma, chronic pain, heart disease, irritable bowel syndrome, migraines, overactive thyroid, rheumatoid arthritis, stroke and even death.

The best-studied method is cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), which focuses on changing thoughts and behaviours that contribute to anxiety. The specifics often vary depending on the type of anxiety. For example, people who have obsessive-compulsive disorder, phobias or post-traumatic stress disorder can benefit from exposure therapy, in which they repeatedly encounter the situations or objects they most fear in order to become desensitized to them. Group training in problem-solving skills, relaxation and sleep hygiene can help. Finding a therapist through a friend or relative or a recommendation from their doctor had better outcomes than those who picked someone from the phone book or health plan’s provider list.