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Grace Fields

English 1201

Prof. Cassel

29 September 2019

Coping With Anxiety

What are the best ways to cope with anxiety? This question is asked by thousands of

struggling people everyday. There are many different types of anxiety, but they all have

common effects. Some of the symptoms of anxiety are lack of concentration, excessive

amounts of stress, insomnia, hyperventilation, and more. Anxiety is a very common mental

disorder and lots of people struggle to find ways to cope with it, including me. In this essay, I

hope to help readers learn new ways to overcome or ease anxiety.

In the past, anxiety was very common in 20-30 year olds; however it is most common at

the age of 13-18. Anxiety was mostly recognized in people with depression disorders. In the

1990s, the annual cost of anxiety disorders was $42.3 billion in the US or $1542 per sufferer.

More than half of the costs when into non-psychiatric treatment, when only 31% of the US used

psychiatric treatment.

In the 1950s, doctors would diagnose someone with depression and give them

antidepressant pills. People would come back to their doctors complaining about side effects

involving anxiety. After a couple of years, depression and anxiety became more common.

Doctors were starting to notice patients with depression often had anxiety as well. Depending on
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your level of anxiety, you were considered psychotic and some patients with anxiety were sent

to a psychiatric ward.

In these articles I could not find any differences between them. All of these articles had

similar coping mechanisms, causes, and history. The main similarity I noticed between most of

the articles was, anxiety and depression go hand in hand. In the article “How an Age of Anxiety

Became an Age of Depression” and the article “The natural history of anxiety disorders”, they

explained the effects of them together. In the article “The natural history of anxiety disorders”

Angst states “​The course is often characterized by a certain chronicity that manifests itself in

residual symptoms and mild impairment in social roles even after many years and is frequently

complicated with depression.” Horwitz, the author of “​How an Age of Anxiety Became an Age of

Depression​” states “The transition of the age of anxiety into the age of depression demonstrates

that diagnoses are contingent on the impact of changing social circumstances.” These quotes

not only lead anxiety to depression, but they are also due to social situations.

Many think anxiety can be cured by regularly taking medicine, which is not true.

Medication can help ease some of the anxiety, but it cannot make it disappear forever. In the

article “How to Cope With Anxiety” the author, Lerche Davis states “​Medication will not cure an

anxiety disorder, but it will help keep it under control.” This is a very common misconception

people have between anxiety and medication.

In conclusion, anxiety disorders and treatments have changed throughout the years.

Although it has changed, there are new ways to cope with anxiety that will help different
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severities. Whether it is self-management, therapy, or counseling, there is a light at the end of

the tunnel.
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References

Angst, J., and M. Vollrath. “The Natural History of Anxiety Disorders.” ​Wiley Online

Library,​ John Wiley & Sons, Ltd (10.1111), 23 Aug. 2007,

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.1600-0447.1991.tb03176.x​.

Davis, Jeanie Lerche. “How to Deal With Anxiety: Learning How to Cope.” ​WebMD,​

WebMD, 31 Dec. 2009, ​https://www.webmd.com/anxiety-panic/features/coping-with-anxiety#2​.

Felmen, Adam. “Anxiety Treatment: Self-Management, Therapy, and Medication.”

Medical News Today,​ MediLexicon International, 18 Nov. 2018,

https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/323494.php​.

Greenberg, P E, et al. “The Economic Burden of Anxiety Disorders in the 1990s.” ​The

Journal of Clinical Psychiatry​, U.S. National Library of Medicine, July 1999,

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/10453795​.

Horwitz, Allan V. “How an Age of Anxiety Became an Age of Depression.” ​The Milbank

Quarterly​, Blackwell Publishing Inc, Mar. 2010,

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2888013/​.