Chapter 14 - Anxiety

Summary

Anxiety may be an independent and truly comorbid disorder. The clinical phenomenology and the correlations of panic, phobic and generalized anxiety are well characterized by the clinical diagnostic guidelines of the international classification system ICD-10. Phobia is characterized by fear that occurs only or mainly when encountering specifically defined situations or objects that objectively are not dangerous. In most cases, agoraphobia is combined with a panic disorder, that is, the feared event is a panic attack. Sometimes, other fearful events like the fear of falling in someone with a gait problem trigger the development of agoraphobia, which then is called agoraphobia without panic disorder. History and physical/neurological examinations are important tools, and laboratory and technical tests are of additional help. Most patients with anxiety disorders in neurology, whether associated with paroxysmal symptoms or not, have organically unexplained symptoms where the principles of clinical medicine and management apply.