Moquin Week 8 Discussion:Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Pharmacotherapies Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Pharmacotherapies

Moquin Week 8 Discussion:Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Pharmacotherapies Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Pharmacotherapies

Life situations typically face us with a level of anxiety, and we cope despite the stress. Our recent experience with the Covid19 pandemic exposed us to fear, uncertainty, and some loss of control. We remembered being in a long Costco line and hoarding food and toilet paper, which gave us some sense of control. As the pandemic worsened, we found ourselves more anxious at work from call lights and code blues, and the added chaos at home from children we needed to home-school. No matter what we did to survive those trying moments, indeed, we experienced temporary anxiety. This pandemic left us with some unwanted memories, to an extent. In time, our anxieties resolved because we coped. Unfortunately, for some of us, the similar anxiety did not leave to the point of becoming pathological.

Rosenthal and Burchum (2021) described GAD as a chronic condition manifested by uncontrollable worrying, and a diagnosis is made if it persists for six months and more. It can exist with another psychiatric disorder, commonly depression. In addition, physical symptoms of restlessness, easy fatiguability, difficulty concentrating, irritability, muscle tension, or sleep disturbance affect the individual with GAD (Terlizzi & Villaroel, 2020). It is more common among women and highest among 18-29 years, decreasing with age. De Martini, Patel, and Fancher (2019) reported that most patients could be diagnosed and managed by primary care providers; otherwise, this can increase the risk for suicide and cardiovascular-related events and death.

Cassano, Rossi, and Pini (2022) emphasized the revolutionized approach to the treatment of a spectrum of anxiety disorders, generalized anxiety disorder (GAD), along with obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), panic disorder (PD), phobias, and post-traumatic disorder PTSD). This meant replacing the chronic use of benzodiazepines (BZs). For this reason—focusing on GAD management meant pharmacotherapeutic strategies with serotonergic reuptake inhibitors (SRIs) through selective serotonergic-reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs) and serotonin-norepinephrine reuptake inhibitors (SNRIs); and a nonbenzodiazepine-nonbarbiturate drug (azapirones).