![]() In support of this premise, death anxiety correlated with the symptom severity of 12 disorders (Menzies et al., 2019), distress, and the number of lifetime prognoses (Menzies & Dar-Nimrod, 2017). Death anxiety as a transdiagnostic construct can likely indicate unresolved psychological and physical distress in many disorders. Recently, the transdiagnostic approach has proposed that some dispositions, traits, or constructs such as a high level of rumination, perfectionism, avoidance, low positive affect, lack of control, and death anxiety can act as vulnerability factors in developing or maintaining various mental disorders, including anxiety disorders (Iverach et al., 2014 Menzies et al., 2019). Accordingly, Asian clinical presentations of anxiety disorders including GAD were found to be highly associated with weakness-related somatic symptoms resulted from catastrophic cognitions such as cardiac arrest, brain depletion, dangerous weakening, weak kidney, weak nerves, semen loss, limb blockage, sore neck, vomiting, dizziness, loss of mental power, headaches, or orthostatic dizziness (Hinton et al., 2009) which might remind us of the feelings of ontological vulnerability, worthlessness, or helplessness stemming from death awareness in our taken-for-granted lives. Furthermore, these individuals tend to misinterpret emotional and bodily reactions with catastrophic cognitions that exacerbate anxiety and worry attacks (Clark, 1986). Individuals with GAD report high general health concerns and physical symptoms such as cardiovascular, respiratory, neurological, gastrointestinal, or autonomic responses (Stein & Sareen, 2015 Wittchen & Hoyer, 2001). The most common worry themes are death, illness, social rejection, isolation, and failure (Beck, 1974). GAD is characterized by extreme and uncontrollable anxiety, worry, restlessness, and fatigue (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). The course is often chronic-recurrent (Bandelow et al., 2017) and associated with severe physical health conditions such as coronary heart disease (Martens et al., 2010 Roest et al., 2012). Even though the age of onset for anxiety disorders is typically in childhood or adolescence, GAD can still be expected in old age (50 years or more). GAD markedly compromises an individual’s quality of life and psychosocial functioning nevertheless, most of the time, the somatic presentations are misunderstood and under-treated in primary care (Bandelow et al., 2017 Mendlowicz & Stein, 2000). Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is a highly prevalent psychiatric disorder leading to enormous healthcare costs from 3.1% to 5.7% over a patient’s lifetime (Kessler & Wang, 2008). In conclusion, existential issues such as death anxiety, hardiness, and meaningful life can be emphasized for the treatment of GAD, and the presence of meaning is the most crucial antidote to avoid death anxiety in all individuals. Hierarchical regression analysis displayed that the presence of meaning made the most significant contribution in predicting death anxiety. ![]() The one-way MANOVA results with Bonferroni adjustment revealed that individuals with GAD significantly differed from the control group in every way. ![]() The Death Anxiety Scale, The Meaning in Life Questionnaire and the Psychological Hardiness Scale were administered to all the participants. Just before the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic, we could only recruit 38 individuals with GAD and 31 non-anxious control subjects. Secondly, we examined how conceptually predicted death anxiety by meaning in life dimensions and hardiness regardless of diagnosis, age, and gender. Thus, we aimed to investigate to what extent the GAD sample differs from the non-anxious control group in terms of death anxiety, meaning in life dimensions, and hardiness. So far, there has been no study examining the role of meaning in life dimensions, death anxiety, and hardiness in individuals with GAD in Turkey. Personal resilience factors such as a sense of a meaningful life, and psychological hardiness, which can protect people from developing clinical symptoms, may be lower in individuals with GAD. According to the transdiagnostic approach, death anxiety can underpin predominantly somatic manifestations of GAD. ![]() Generalized anxiety disorder (GAD) is a widespread psychiatric disorder. ![]()
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