Anxiety Disorders

Mental health treatment for Anxiety in Sydney

Some anxiety is common throughout a person’s life. It’s natural to be a little nervous about a meeting with a boss, or a first date, or after a near-miss accident while driving. But when that anxiety persists and starts to control their life, they may have an anxiety disorder.

Anxiety can disrupt a person’s life. But it also responds very well to treatment. With therapy, medication, or both, anxiety can be effectively managed and controlled.

Not everyone’s anxiety fits into a specific box, and we encourage you to contact us if you feel that anxiety or depression may be controlling your life. The following are some anxiety disorders that we can help treat here at Gordon Private Hospital. Click on the link to learn more:

• Generalized Anxiety Disorder

• Social Anxiety

• Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)

• Panic Disorder

• PTSD

With friendly, understanding psychologists and psychiatrists, training in the latest in mental health research, and a focus on your long-lasting anxiety management, our team at Gordon Private Hospital is here to help.

We’ll get to know you and learn more about you, your life, and your struggles, and use a scientifically supported approach to determine whether therapy, medication, or other treatment options represents the best path forward for you.

Generalised Anxiety Disorder

People with Generalised Anxiety Disorder tend to worry more than others and often recognise their worry as excessive. Worries usually revolve around not one but lots of different things, like finances, relationships, work, health or upcoming events.

As the worries can be very difficult to stop and consume concentration, people with generalised anxiety often have difficulties focusing at work or going to sleep in the evening. Other effects of excessive worry include feelings of apprehension, muscle tension or restlessness.

Worry can be an attempt to avoid uncertainty by trying to think through every contingency however, often there are too many unknowns for this to be successful and people can have difficulties tolerating this uncertainty.

"What if ...?" worries can undermine problem-solving and prevent people from facing the underlying fear driving the anxiety, thus reducing a person's confidence to be able to cope with the worst case scenario.

People also report that they worry about the effects of worrying (e.g. they believe that worry is harmful or dangerous) which increases the intensity of worry.  People often make attempts to suppress or avoid their worries but often report a difficulty stopping this style thinking. Worriers often report insight that worrying does not help their anxiety but continue to do so because it provides them a sense of trying to do something about the problem.

How common is it?

According to the 2007 Australian National Survey of Mental Health, it is estimated that 1 in 37 Australians experienced Generalised Anxiety Disorder in the 12 months before the survey.

Individuals with Generalised Anxiety Disorder frequently also experience symptoms of other disorders, most commonly other anxiety disorders and unipolar depressive disorder.

Professional help

There are a number of different approaches to treating generalised anxiety. Usually this involves teaching people to obtain greater control over their worry through a variety of specific cognitive therapy skills. Problem solving is then applied to help manage stressors more effectively and to shift attention towards meaningful life activities.

Social Anxiety

Social anxiety is a marked fear of social or performance situations where there is the potential to be humiliated or scrutinised by others. The fear usually stems from a concern about saying or doing something awkward, or worries about others noticing their anxiety symptoms, such as blushing.

This usually leads to people avoiding these situations or enduring them with significant distress which often affects their ability to do what they would like to in life, e.g. limiting job opportunities, or not being able to attend social gatherings and functions. People suffering from social anxiety usually recognise that their fear is excessive.

Research suggests that people with social anxiety have intense self-awareness. This self-directed attention, which usually involves scanning for social blunders, tends to take their focus away from the social situation, thus making it more difficult to engage in conversations.

People also have a tendency to make negative predictions, such as that others will find them boring or that others will notice their anxiety symptoms (e.g. blushing) and judge them negatively as a result.

How common is it?

According to the 2007 Australian National Survey of Mental Health, it is estimated that 1 in 21 Australians experienced social anxiety in the 12 months before the survey.

Social anxiety often co-occurs with other anxiety disorders, major depressive disorder and substance use disorders. Comorbidities with bipolar disorder and body dysmorphic disorder have also been documented.

Professional Help

Research suggests that cognitive therapy is a very effective way to treat these symptoms This typically involves exploring the presence of safety behaviours and how this impacts ongoing learning, developing appropriate behavioural experiments and learning to redirect self directed attention.

Exposure Therapy may also assist which involves gradually confronting the situations that trigger excessive anxiety, thus allowing the body to habituate to these triggers and for you to build up confidence in these situations.

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder

 What is it?

As the name suggests, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is characterised by people experiencing obsessions, which are unwanted thoughts or images that cause significant distress, and compulsions, which are actions or mental rituals to somehow cancel out the intrusive thought or prevent bad things from happening. Because compulsions are attempts to manage the distress associated with the obsessions, people usually experience both types of symptoms.

Although compulsions usually develop as a strategy to cope with the obsessions, they often become a secondary source of distress, particularly if the compulsions are time-consuming or embarrassing. It is common for people to experience increased anxiety if they are prevented from carrying out their compulsions and as such become highly dependent on them.

Common obsessions and associated compulsions include:

• obsessions about contracting an illness and excessive hand washing or cleaning to eliminate germs.

• obsessions about harm to one's possessions through break-ins or fires and excessive checking of locks and stoves to ensure everything is secure.

• experiencing unwanted and distressing violent, sexual or religious thoughts or images, and trying to avoid or neutralise these in some way.

• obsessions about symmetry and exactness with excessive ordering and arranging until it “feels right”.

Unwanted thoughts are actually quite common in the general population and most people do not dwell on these when they occur. However, for some people unwanted thoughts cause much distress and become concerned about the meaning of having these thoughts.

As a result of the attention given to the intrusions, they become more salient which tends to increase the frequency of these thoughts. Compulsions performed in response to the intrusion further maintain the fear triggered by the intrusion.

How common is it?

According to the 2007 Australian National Survey of Mental Health, it is estimated that 1 in 53 Australians experienced OCD in the 12 months before the survey.

The majority of people with OCD also experience symptoms of an anxiety disorder, such as generalised anxiety, social anxiety, panic or specific phobia; as well as depressive or bipolar disorder.

Other less common co morbid conditions include obsessive-compulsive personality disorder, tic disorders, and ADHD in children. Other obsessive-compulsive and related disorders, like trichotillomania, have also been linked to OCD.

Professional Help

The most common psychological therapy for OCD is exposure / response prevention. This involves a variety of strategies to decrease the anxiety when confronted with the obsessional triggers and to test fear predictions that drive the compulsive behaviours. 

Many people with OCD are concerned about what might happen if they do not perform the compulsive behaviour. This is a normal concern clinical psychologist will usually explore this with the patient, which may involve some experiments to test out these concerns, before gradually reducing or eliminating compulsive behaviours.

Panic Disorder

What is it?

A panic attack is a sudden rush of intense anxiety symptoms that tend to peak within 10 minutes. People usually experience symptoms like shortness of breath, heart palpitations, dizziness, fear of going crazy, sweating or shaking.

Repeated panic attacks can create a concern about having future panic attacks which often results in the person changing their behaviour to reduce the likelihood of another panic attack. For example, some people will carry a bottle of water or keep their phone close as a safety mechanism while others avoid exercise due to fear of the physical sensation that an increased heart rate produces.

While safety and avoidance behaviours are usually effective in the short term, they maintain the anxiety in the long run. People suffering from panic attacks often fear that the physical sensations they experience will lead to a catastrophic event such as a heart attack. These thoughts further fuel the fear of physical symptoms of anxiety.

While panic attacks can occur out of the blue, some people find these attacks strike  in situations that are difficult to escape, like  driving through a tunnel, being on a train or in the midst of a large crowd of people. This can create a fear and avoidance of these situations, a phenomenon called Agoraphobia.

How common is it?

According to the 2007 Australian National Survey of Mental Health, it is estimated that 1 in 38 Australians experienced panic disorder in the 12 months before the survey.

People with panic disorder frequently also meet criteria for other disorders, most commonly other anxiety disorder, depression, bipolar disorder, alcohol use and certain medical conditions, including dizziness, cardiac arrhythmias, hyperthyroidism, asthma, COPD and irritable bowl syndrome.

Professional Help

Because people suffering from Panic Disorder usually fear the symptoms of anxiety, therapy tends to involve purposely eliciting and gradually confronting patients with these symptoms within a controlled environment which allows the body to habituate and reduce its false alarm response. A careful analysis and reduction of any avoidance or safety behaviours is also critical.

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Anxiety Disorders treatment

At Gordon Private Hospital, our multidisciplinary team of mental health specialists can provide safe and effective anxiety management treatment. For more information, please contact us Admission Team.