Treatments for anxiety
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LearningTranscript
00:00There's a range of different treatments for anxiety, so let's explore some of those, starting
00:07with counselling and psychotherapy options.
00:10So the most popular is cognitive behavioural therapy.
00:14In this, your therapist will teach you things, so they'll talk about how thoughts and feelings
00:19and behaviours are all connected, and they'll look at consequences.
00:23For example, we have a panic attack when we go to the shopping centre, so we stop going
00:28to the shopping centre, and that provides short-term gains.
00:31We don't have the panic attacks anymore, but in a long time our world gets smaller.
00:35And you'll work through various workbooks and worksheets around that, and kind of learn
00:42how anxiety works and how you could respond differently to different situations.
00:49Then there's mindfulness-based approaches, so here we will actively practice just paying
00:55attention to how we're feeling and what's going on around us.
00:58This might be in kind of formal sit-down practices or informally everyday life, but we'll try
01:05and disconnect from the idea that our thoughts and our feelings are something we have to
01:10react to immediately and are true, but kind of take a step back and just kind of notice,
01:16okay, I'm having this thought, I'm having this feeling, I feel a real urge to run away
01:21from this situation, and I'm going to notice that without necessarily acting on it.
01:27Then we have more counselling and humanistic therapy approaches, so you might hear terms
01:33like person-centred, emotion-focused, gestalt, things like this.
01:38In these kind of therapies, you're going to talk about your feelings in the sessions.
01:42So in the counselling sessions themselves, they're often quite emotionally charged because
01:47we're bringing really tough feelings into the session.
01:51Typically work well if you hate homework because there isn't much homework, but the sessions
01:55themselves tend to be quite emotive, and so rather than in CBT, you kind of go in and
02:02you do the fun talking bit, and then you go out and do the heavy homework, in more humanistic
02:08approaches like counselling is often a shorthand for humanistic psychotherapy.
02:15If you're doing that kind of thing, the counselling sessions are often pretty heavy, but then
02:19there's not as much homework.
02:22So those are your kind of talking therapy options.
02:24Then there's a range of pharmacologicals.
02:28So we're talking about drugs here, and typically to treat anxiety, we're using antidepressants,
02:35and there's a couple of types.
02:36So SSRIs and SNRIs will typically be the first thing your doctor gives you.
02:44So something like citalopram or sertraline is an SSRI, and these target specific parts
02:52of the brain, and then there's also tricyclics or TCAs, you might hear this term as well.
03:00These are typically used if the SSRIs and SNRIs haven't worked, so that's kind of a
03:05second line.
03:06They're all known as kind of antidepressants, but antidepressants tend to work on anxiety
03:13as well.
03:15Then there's stuff we can do outside of the doctor's office or the therapist's office.
03:19So there's lifestyle factors, so things like exercise, sleep, diet, really useful things
03:26to spend time on.
03:28Also the amount of socialising we do, engaging in our hobbies of interest.
03:32All of these are good, that's not to say they're a replacement for going to see a doctor or
03:37going to see a therapist, but they do have an impact on mood.
03:41They can help us feel happier, and so they're absolutely worth investing some real time
03:46in as well.