What are the symptoms of hypochondriasis anxiety disorder?

There are many causes of hypochondriasis and anxiety disorder in middle-aged or young people. Most of them are related to a person's personality and living environment. In addition, because people are now overloaded with work, it can cause some problems to the body, so patients will experience panic and even feel restless when sleeping. More serious cases may also have suicidal tendencies.

1. Symptom Classification

Anxiety disorders mostly occur in middle-aged and young people. The triggering factors are mainly related to a person's personality and environment. The former is more common in introverted, shy, and overly neurotic people, while the latter is often closely related to fierce competition, overload of work, long-term mental work, tense interpersonal relationships, etc. Some patients also have atypical triggers. Clinically, doctors often divide anxiety disorders into two categories: acute anxiety and chronic anxiety.

(1) Acute anxiety: The main manifestation is panic attacks, which often occur during sleep at night. The patient has a feeling of impending death, violent heartbeats, chest tightness, throat obstruction and difficulty breathing. The excessive breathing caused by panic causes respiratory alkali poisoning (excessive exhalation of carbon dioxide causes the blood to be alkaline), which can also induce numbness of the limbs, numbness around the mouth, pale face, abdominal distension, etc., further aggravating the patient's fear and causing mental breakdown. Such patients are often emotionally agitated and nervous when they seek medical treatment, often giving the doctor the illusion of a cardiovascular disease attack. Generally, an acute anxiety attack lasts for a few minutes or hours. After the attack or after appropriate treatment, the symptoms can be relieved or disappear.

(2) Chronic anxiety: Acute anxiety often occurs against the background of chronic anxiety, but more patients mainly show symptoms of chronic anxiety. Generally, the typical manifestations of chronic anxiety are five major symptoms, namely palpitations, fatigue, nervousness, shortness of breath and chest pain. In addition, there are tension, cold sweats, fainting, belching, nausea, abdominal distension, constipation, impotence, frequent urination, etc. Sometimes it is difficult to distinguish it from neurasthenia or other specialized diseases. Therefore, doctors need to have a comprehensive and detailed understanding of the condition to avoid misdiagnosis. Sometimes some necessary auxiliary examinations can help rule out organic diseases, such as electrocardiograms, chest X-rays, gastrointestinal angiography, gastroscopy, etc., which can help doctors diagnose the disease. However, although the subjective symptoms of anxiety are severe, the objective signs are very mild or negative.

2. Symptoms and characteristics

(1) Generalized anxiety disorder:

It is characterized by frequent or persistent nervousness and uneasiness without a clear object or fixed content, or excessive worry or annoyance about certain problems in real life. This nervousness, worry or annoyance is very inconsistent with reality; it is often accompanied by autonomic hyperfunction, motor tension and excessive vigilance.

(2) Panic attack:

The patient suffers from repeated intense panic states, accompanied by a sense of impending death or loss of control, and may have severe autonomic nervous system symptoms.

(3) At least three panic attacks in one month, each lasting no more than 2 hours, significantly affecting daily activities.