Rethinking Anxiety during COVID-19; How do we control the rise of Anxiety diagnoses during this pandemic period?
During Mid-February to Mid-March there has been a 34.1% increase in the number of American’s filling anti-anxiety medication prescriptions . As practitioners, we need to begin a dialogue about the blurred line between diagnosing Anxiety based on a client’s symptoms and seeing Anxiety as a natural extension of the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Broadly, Anxiety is characterized by excessive rumination on thoughts that trigger worry and tension that an individual cannot control with their set of learnt coping strategies. To be diagnosed with Anxiety an individual would have to exhibit the aforementioned symptoms for at least 6 months. Further an individual would have noticeable impairments in concentration, sleeping habits, emotional and physical fatigue, restlessness and/or irritability.
The symbiotic nature between anxiety symptoms and the emotional experience of living through the daily uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, poses a significant dilemma. On one hand individuals are presenting with very real emotional experiences of Anxiety that warrant support. However, on the other hand, we have to ask “is anti-anxiety medication the right course of action to support individuals with symptom management?” There is no clear-cut answer here, but my hope is to start the conversation so that we can develop a collaborative best practice.
I will contribute here that the emotional impact of Anxiety often disrupts an individual’s ability to engage in everyday activities and the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic also disrupts the flow of normal activities and so we have to look at another criterion for distinction to support our course of treatment. To that end, the critical question is “have the symptoms of Anxiety been experienced for at least 6 months?” I would argue that if anxiety symptoms are recent, the therapeutic approach may be to suspend diagnosis and prescriptions to engage in therapies that teach clients strategies to deal with Anxiety within the pandemic period.
