Anxiety, Depression And Pstd

Anxiety, Depression and PSTD

Living in a post 9/11 world we often here of New Yorkers experiencing anxiety or depression over the traumatic event that has occurred in this city. However how many New Yorkers in actuality really experience anxiety or depression as a result of 9/11? And what exactly is the difference between anxiety and depression, most people think the two are very closely related. Who is more prone to developing anxiety (or post traumatic stress disorder) over 9/11?

The reason I find anxiety and depression very interesting is because my mother, aunt, and best friend suffer from it. My best friend's first experience with anxiety occurred at the age of sixteen. She and I were together and out of nowhere she had turned a greenish color, told me she could not breath and thought that she was going to die, I being sixteen also at the time had no idea what was going on and in turn called an ambulance. Little did I know my friend was having an anxiety attack. My aunt in the passed year has experienced a couple of attacks also, she is on medication right now because they are very frequent as opposed to my friend who has only had a couple in her lifetime.

First I would like to differentiate anxiety from depression. A person who suffers from anxiety does not necessarily have depression. However according to an article in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology, there are not many people who have depression but do not have anxiety. In fact, in a study conducted by a journal they could not find enough people who suffered from depression but not anxiety and therefore they had to use a mixed group (people with both anxiety and depression). "Anxiety can be thought of as a state of high NA (negative affect) and depression as a combined state of high NA and low PA (positive affect)."(Byrne & Macleod, 286) In other words anxiety might be related only to increased expectancies concerning negative events, depression on the other hand may be related to increased negative expectancies due to its high NA and decreased positive expectancies due to its low PA.

In the study conducted by the Journal of Abnormal Psychology people were placed in 3 groups. The first group was people with anxiety but no depression, second group had both, and the third group had neither (control group). The study used self-report questionnaires, anxiety and depression scales, and a personal-future task. In the self-report questionnaire twenty true or false questions were administered to assess hopelessness. "The Anxiety Scale items cover the following: feeling keyed up and on edge, generalized worry, irritability, difficulty relaxing, localized tension pains, autonomic symptoms, health worries, poor quality sleep, and delayed sleep. The Depression Scale covers hopelessness, loss of energy, loss of interests, loss of confidence, inefficient thinking, poor appetite, feeling slowed down, early waking, and feeling worse in the mornings."(Byrne & Macleod, 287) The personal-future task required participants to think of future experiences occurring over three different time periods, which were, the next week, the next year, and the next 5-10 years.

Both anxious and mixed participants generated significantly more negative future experiences than the controlled participants, but only the mixed participants generated fewer positive future experiences than the controlled group. Relative to the controlled group both the anxious and mixed groups reported similarly elevated levels of worry. The results were consistent with the view that anxiety is associated with increased negative future thinking but not with decreased positive future thinking. However depression is associated with both increased negative and decreased positive future thinking.

Now that we have differentiated between anxiety and depression, I believe that the events of 9/11 would if anything cause anxiety rather than depression. In another study conducted by the Journal of Abnormal Psychology called, "Anxiety, Depression, and Assertion Across Alternating Intervals of Stress", 12 undergraduate students at the American University of Beirut were exposed to "significant war-related stressor". The students were asserted 12 days before the stressor, 8, thirty-seven, and three hundred