Somatic masks of anxiety disorder and therapy opportunities

Anxiety disorders are often found in the practice of doctors of all specialties and cause difficulties in making a diagnosis, which is associated with a variety of clinical manifestations. Traditionally, anxiety disorders are considered within the framework of neuroses and include conditions such as adjustment disorders, generalized anxiety disorder, and a number of somatoform disorders. The article gives a distinction between the concepts of “anxiety” and “anxiety disorders”. It should be noted that anxiety disorders cannot be considered in isolation from the concept of “stress”. Chronic stressful situations exacerbate or contribute to the development of somatic pathology, including neurological. The somatic manifestations of anxiety disorders are diverse and affect all organs and systems: cardialgia, tachycardia, heart rhythm disturbances, hyperventilation syndrome, abdominalgia, irritable bowel syndrome, neurodermatitis, etc. It is important to timely and correctly diagnose generalized anxiety disorder, which occurs both in isolation (borderline psychiatry) and in patients with various somatic pathologies and its main manifestation is generalized, persistent anxiety, not caused and not limited by any external circumstances, accompanied by autonomic, motor manifestations. Diagnostic criteria for generalized anxiety disorder are also presented in the article.

To identify and objectify symptoms of anxiety in practice, it is advisable to use special questionnaires: the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, the Hamilton Anxiety Scale, the Spielberger-Khanin Situational and Personal Anxiety Scale. The article presents a clinical case of a patient with anxiety disorder. The clinical picture and tactics of managing the patient are analyzed. The addition of etifoxine to therapy made it possible to stop the clinical manifestations of anxiety disorder in a short time.

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