Anxiety disorders are mostly treated as outpatients and receive less attention from clinical psychiatrists than patients with disorders requiring inpatient treatment
BY DR JEYARAJAH SIVALINGAM
Anxiety is often looked upon as a stepchild of most psychiatric disorders, although it possibly is the most prevalent and treatable. It now has its official designation ICD-10-CM version of F41.1, this too mainly being to qualify for billing purposes.
Among mental diseases, anxiety disorders, including panic disorder with or without agoraphobia, generalised anxiety disorder (GAD), social anxiety disorder (SAD), specific phobias and separation anxiety disorder, are the most frequent. Because patients with anxiety disorders are mostly treated as outpatients, they probably receive less attention from clinical psychiatrists than patients with other disorders that require inpatient treatment but are less frequent, such as schizophrenia or bipolar affective disorders.
Although the numbers differ, the prevalence of at least 30 per cent of the general population has felt its scars in one way or another.
This is my small contribution to understanding this malady and perhaps offers a glimpse of hope and a solution.
You worry in your thoughts, does the road wind up the hill? All the way?
Would you also worry knowing there is a resting place for the night?
For what is anxiety but the postponing of life, the living in the fear of tomorrow
And if it is for your tomorrows to fret and frown, it is also for your thoughts to delight and rejoice in todays
And if you cannot but rejoice your todays, and insist on life in tomorrows, be prepared to be skinned down to your bones
You are at your best when you rise to meet the peaceful vibrations of life in the moment
Therefore, let your visit to mother earth be that of dancing in the moments
For if you learn the dance called now, anxiety would be a foreign stranger to you
And if you should make a habit of dwelling on tomorrow, then anxiety would be your loyal companion
It is suffice that life is not a bed of roses
I cannot but imagine the scars of this many-headed anxiety, the missed possibilities
Anxiety enslaved people you, save when you stare it in the eye and her fire can not burn louder, with the awareness,
That it is just a thought of tomorrow
But you who are made of flesh, bone and blood is, unfortunately, controlled by your thoughts
And if you but listen in the stillness of the night, you will hear the whispers of wisdom
Your lives, your thoughts, and your will, is present and real only in the now
It is a painful delusion to live in the anxious tomorrow.
– The Health
Dr Jeyarajah Sivalingam is a Consultant Physician at MAC Clinics
