Recurring thoughts, memories, images, dreams or distressing ‘flashbacks’ of a traumatic life event that was experienced (or witnessed) at some stage in life. Post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms include anxiety, which may come and go, and It may develop years after the traumatic event has occurred.
Recurrent fearful of anxious throughts (i.e. obsessions, like intrustive fear of spreading or contracting some sort of contamination, or inadvertently harming someone), sometimes associated with mental or physical rituals or other behaviours (i.e. compulsions, like excessive washing, counting, checking etc.) intended to cancel or neutralise out the obsessive throughts. Symptoms vary from mild to very severe.
Intense periods of fear known as panic attacks, usually lasting a few minutes and often triggered by something, but they may develop for no apparent reason. Fear of having further attacks may stop people from leaving home or safe, familiar surrounding areas (i.e. agoraphobia).
Fear that is out of proportion to any real danger and which interfere with the ability to live a normal life. Common phobias include fear of heights, certain animals or insects, blood, injections, being sick, enclosed spaces and fear of flying.
A long-term disorder characterised by feeling worried most of the time about things that might possibly go wrong.
Anxiety disorder is an umbrella term that covers a range of mental health problems characterised by excessive worrying, apprehension and fear about future uncertainties either based on real or imagined events, which may affect both physical and psychological health. Some of the specific disorders are listed opposite.