Anxiety Treatment - Anxiety Medications and Its Side Effects

by Emeka Ezidiegwu

Posted on Monday 8th of December 2008

Anxiety symptoms vary from person to person in intensity, and in which symptoms may occur for them. There are different kinds of anxiety classified as emotional disorders. Neurontin depression anxiety, social anxiety, and panic anxiety disorder, to name a few. Although psychologically rooted, anxiety produces many physical symptoms, some of which can be distressing and panic inducing to those experiencing them. People with anxiety tend to feel a sense of anxiousness most of the time without letup.

Stress can result in anxiety for many people. However, absent of an underlying emotional disorder, most people feeling anxiety because of stress can usually cope well with it. People with anxiety disorders on the other hand may have difficulty with normal functioning due to the amount of anxiety and the associated emotional and physical symptoms they may be experiencing. A lack of understanding about why they feel as they do and why they cannot just control their fears and anxiety, and receiving similar responses from others only makes the anxiety worse. Although it might be easy to identify stress as a possible trigger in increasing the occurrence and suffering of an anxiety disorder, other triggering factors are not so easily identifiable. Not knowing what may trigger anxiety to build is in itself anxiety inducing.

Someone with social anxiety would understandable be quite uncomfortable in most social settings, however, they may begin to feel their anxiety building while still at home and not in a social situation. Some common anxiety symptoms include but are not limited to, mounting fear, racing heart, labored breathing, paleness to the skin, sweating, lightheadedness, headache, nausea, vomiting, muscle twitching, eye darting, repetitive negative thoughts, avoidance of certain situations. How intense these symptoms are felt and how many different symptoms will occur, varies among individuals.

Anxiety attacks come upon a person suddenly and seemingly without warning as most suffering from these panic attacks of anxiety have related. In the midst of an anxiety attack, the activation of a person’s innate instinct to either fight or take flight happens in response to perceived danger. This is helpful when real danger is present; however, it causes undue panic and suffering when the danger is not real and is instead as of a result of an anxiety disorder. Someone may unintentionally hurt themselves or others in trying to get away from something they believe to be hazardous.

Anxiety medications like Buspar, Cymbalta, and others, can cause at least some of the above listed symptoms of anxiety, as side effects of taking them. Luckily, most of these side effects such as headache, feeling dizzy, cold sweats, sick to the stomach, and other symptoms, usually dissipate within a few weeks of use of the medication. Antidepressant medications used for treating anxiety also share in the occurrence of these common side effects.

People taking anxiety and antidepressant medications for anxiety need close monitoring by their doctors to ensure that the medications are helping alleviate anxiety symptoms for the patient. Doctors will also want to monitor patients for withdrawal symptoms when discontinuing their use of these medications.