Anxiety disorder has affected human beings for a long time. This prevalent mental health problem that affects millions of people was common at the beginning of the 19th and 20th centuries. A study carried out by Dowbiggin (2009) showed that anxiety is traced throughout history by mainly making an observation on the social events that were outstanding at that time and how the people reacted to issues.Therefore it is proper to identify gender, culture, medical fields, and education and how these affected anxiety among the people at various times in history. Most importantly, looking at how categories of social disorders had been diagnosed through the efforts of various groups and how the problem was progressively addressed by various experts to find a solution to reduce problems of mental health among the people was a point to note. The hypothesis of this study was that anxiety disorder is contributed by the social factors.
The independent variable is anxiety disorder. The social anxiety disorder (SAD) which affects millions of people in the world.The examples of SAD include posttraumatic stress disorder (PSTD), and generalized anxiety disorder (GAD).The social anxiety disorder shares some symptoms with other psychiatric conditions called phobias such as agoraphobia (fear of places or social situations), and body dysmorphilia (fear of the deformity of the body member, or dislike of one’s body figure by an individual).
The dependent variables include work related anxiety. It emanated from giving presentations, taking phone calls, leading workshops and doing launches. Other variables included the self promotional state of modern culture like Survivor and American Idol. The next dependent variable included the revolutionary in the psychopharmacology that led to the production of tranquilizers that were used by the people as a relief of the social anxiety in the 1950s and 1960s.In addition the use of new terminologies such as stress by the psychologist and the psychiatrists to as a diagnosis to the anxiety disorder to the patient that concept was commonly used.Another dependent variable was the self help and recovery moments (SHRM) which constitute a team of experts like counselors, human rights activists among others who gave the diagnosis to the posttraumatic stress disorder encouraging the veterans of war, sexually abused women to live a normal life. Conspirational thinking that emerged due to terrorism activities e.g. 9/11 U.S attack (Dowbiggin, 2009).
The participants included the working elites like Gail Andrew, the patients, the Psychiatrists (American Psychiatric Association), war veterans of both the 2nd world war and the Vietnam war, American Department Program of Affairs on War Veterans, women and men in business and education portfolios historians and SHRM. The population size that was sampled included 3 millions Canadians who were middle aged and 20 million adult Americans.
The research method used in the study was survey that was carried out by the medical institutes e.g. National Institute of Mental Health Problem (2001) and World Mental Health Survey (2002) declared and reported that anxiety was prevalent mental health among the Americans and the world at large. The random sampling technique was used e.g. 10% of the Canadians and Americans suffered from social anxiety and 1in5 men and women in France used tranquilizers as anti anxiety depressants. The use of theoretical approach e.g. Freudian Psychoanalytic theory to explain the issue of stress and its diagnosis to the patient. Use of the secondary sources such as history works of the historian was used.
The findings of the study show that anxiety disorder rises due to social factors, revolutions in the pharmaceuticals that makes more people to rely on tranquilizers and other depressants to overcome anxiety disorder and self help and recovery movements(SHRM)which encourages the victims of wars and sexually harassed women to live a stress free life, social interactions ,self promotional state of modern culture which affects the way of life people across the world, social trends ,use of new terminologies like stress to explain anxiety disorder, change in the gender roles of women has increased social anxiety among women in the their new roles as business women ,executives, administrators and as education scholars. conspirational paranoism that creates anxiety to the people e.g. terrorism.
There is also the role of gender in the development of this mental complication. Gender based analysis shows that in the 1970s many women were in the job charts holding very senior corporate and management portfolios. But their concern to the increase in the level of anxiety was partly based on social and biological factors. These factors featured mainly on how women reacted to some certain bodily sensations as compared to men. Their reactions from the demands of the area of profession and the education experiences also affected them differently.
Finally, he turning of major global issues such as terrorism especially when terrorists attacked World Trade Center on 11/9/2001 in the US ushered in the conspiracy thinking ideas among the people which brought in fear and worries which forced people to handle issues and situation from different perspectives in order to avoid becoming the victims of circumstances. The new conspiracy movies and web materials were written to uncover conspiracy thinking in order to reduce social anxiety disorder among the people in the so society or the world at large. The conspiracy fearism affected the whole society whether political class and the educated fellows are no exception since they are battled by the spirit of anxiety through paranoid tandem with the help of the work of conspiracy.
The limitation of this study is the disagreement on the arrival to a consensus on discussing the issue of anxiety between the psychiatrists and the theorists of psychology. Large population size of 3 million to 20 million participants could be tedious in the study of the research.The limitation of the study to Canada and U.S.A which hinders getting to know how the other continents like Africa faced with anxiety over the same period of time. Long scope time makes the study to be general.Thus extension of the research should be carried out to other parts of the world, few population sample to be given to reduce chances of biasness.
Reference
Dowbiggin, R. I. (2009). High Anxieties: The Social Construction of Anxiety Disorders. Canadian Journal of Psychiatry. Web.