What is "Generalized Anxiety Disorder"?

What is "Generalized Anxiety Disorder"?

Christopher Reist (Academic Psychiatrist, Co-Author of “Psychiatry”) gives expert video advice on: What are the common treatments for generalized anxiety disorder?; Is there anything I can do to avoid developing generalized anxiety disorder? and more...

Generalised Anxiety Disorder is also referred in short hand as GAD, and it's really characterised by excessive or out-of-control worry. This worry really gets to the point of interfering with a person's attention to tasks at hand, and when that happens, it starts to interfere with ordinary functioning. People with Generalised Anxiety Disorder tend to worry about a lot of ordinary things like finances, their health, or their job performance, but their worry could also include even more trivial things like whether they kept an appointment, or just the typical household things like whether or not the car's repaired properly, and that kind of thing. People with GAD know that their worry is excessive, but despite this, they really just can't do anything about it. Sometimes it's hard to really imagine what this is like, but one way I think everybody can relate to it is by thinking of that experience that when you see the flashing lights of a police car in the rear-view mirror. You feel that rush of tension and apprehension. People with GAD tell me that that's what they experience day in and day out.