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Overwhelming feeling of dread


SAMHSA’s National Helpline | SAMHSA

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  • SAMHSA’s National Helpline is a free, confidential, 24/7, 365-day-a-year treatment referral and information service (in English and Spanish) for individuals and families facing mental and/or substance use disorders.

    Also visit the online treatment locator.

SAMHSA’s National Helpline, 1-800-662-HELP (4357) (also known as the Treatment Referral Routing Service), or TTY: 1-800-487-4889 is a confidential, free, 24-hour-a-day, 365-day-a-year, information service, in English and Spanish, for individuals and family members facing mental and/or substance use disorders. This service provides referrals to local treatment facilities, support groups, and community-based organizations.

Also visit the online treatment locator, or send your zip code via text message: 435748 (HELP4U) to find help near you. Read more about the HELP4U text messaging service.

The service is open 24/7, 365 days a year.

English and Spanish are available if you select the option to speak with a national representative. Currently, the 435748 (HELP4U) text messaging service is only available in English.

In 2020, the Helpline received 833,598 calls. This is a 27 percent increase from 2019, when the Helpline received a total of 656,953 calls for the year.

The referral service is free of charge. If you have no insurance or are underinsured, we will refer you to your state office, which is responsible for state-funded treatment programs. In addition, we can often refer you to facilities that charge on a sliding fee scale or accept Medicare or Medicaid. If you have health insurance, you are encouraged to contact your insurer for a list of participating health care providers and facilities.

The service is confidential. We will not ask you for any personal information. We may ask for your zip code or other pertinent geographic information in order to track calls being routed to other offices or to accurately identify the local resources appropriate to your needs.

No, we do not provide counseling. Trained information specialists answer calls, transfer callers to state services or other appropriate intake centers in their states, and connect them with local assistance and support.

  • Suggested Resources

    What Is Substance Abuse Treatment? A Booklet for Families
    Created for family members of people with alcohol abuse or drug abuse problems. Answers questions about substance abuse, its symptoms, different types of treatment, and recovery. Addresses concerns of children of parents with substance use/abuse problems.

    It's Not Your Fault (NACoA) (PDF | 12 KB)
    Assures teens with parents who abuse alcohol or drugs that, "It's not your fault!" and that they are not alone. Encourages teens to seek emotional support from other adults, school counselors, and youth support groups such as Alateen, and provides a resource list.

    After an Attempt: A Guide for Taking Care of Your Family Member After Treatment in the Emergency Department
    Aids family members in coping with the aftermath of a relative's suicide attempt. Describes the emergency department treatment process, lists questions to ask about follow-up treatment, and describes how to reduce risk and ensure safety at home.

    Family Therapy Can Help: For People in Recovery From Mental Illness or Addiction
    Explores the role of family therapy in recovery from mental illness or substance abuse. Explains how family therapy sessions are run and who conducts them, describes a typical session, and provides information on its effectiveness in recovery.

    For additional resources, please visit the SAMHSA Store.

Last Updated: 08/30/2022

SAMHSA Behavioral Health Treatment Services Locator

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Welcome to the Behavioral Health Treatment Services Locator, a confidential and anonymous source of information for persons seeking treatment facilities in the United States or U.S. Territories for substance use/addiction and/or mental health problems.

PLEASE NOTE: Your personal information and the search criteria you enter into the Locator is secure and anonymous. SAMHSA does not collect or maintain any information you provide.

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The Locator is authorized by the 21st Century Cures Act (Public Law 114-255, Section 9006; 42 U.S.C. 290bb-36d). SAMHSA endeavors to keep the Locator current. All information in the Locator is updated annually from facility responses to SAMHSA’s National Substance Use and Mental Health Services Survey (N-SUMHSS). New facilities that have completed an abbreviated survey and met all the qualifications are added monthly. Updates to facility names, addresses, telephone numbers, and services are made weekly for facilities informing SAMHSA of changes. Facilities may request additions or changes to their information by sending an e-mail to [email protected], by calling the BHSIS Project Office at 1-833-888-1553 (Mon-Fri 8-6 ET), or by electronic form submission using the Locator online application form (intended for additions of new facilities).

Nervous diseases

Category: Health from "A" to "Z".

Everyone can be afraid of something: dogs, the dark, or air travel. But when one of these fears grows to such an extent that it begins to affect his life, it becomes a phobia. Phobia is a mild mental disorder that manifests itself as a pathological fear of one or more factors in our lives that would never seem dangerous to other people. A person begins to panic fear of a particular situation, type of activity or object. There is a radical difference between this fear and everyday stress and anxiety inherent in completely healthy people when they have an exam ahead of them, for example.

In a healthy person, this excitement does not last long, while a phobia always accompanies a person, forcing him to make significant changes in his lifestyle. The causes of phobias are not fully understood. Doctors believe that they are more likely to develop in people who are highly emotional, endowed with a rich imagination and prone to anxiety. The impetus for the emergence of a phobia can be some kind of traumatic incident or severe stress: I got into a thunderstorm, was bitten by a dog, etc. As a rule, a phobia begins in childhood or adolescence and occurs in women 2 times more often than in men.

Conditional types of phobias

There are more than 300 varieties of phobias, and conditionally they can all be divided into five categories.

  • - Phobias related to natural phenomena: thunderstorms, wind, water, etc.
  • - Animal phobia - fear of predators, snakes, dogs, insects, etc.
  • - Phobia of situations: elevators, open spaces, communication.
  • - A phobia of disease and injury, which includes everything from the fear of blood to the fear of death.
  • - Other phobias, the most varied and unexpected, such as the fear of the number 13 or the fear of suffocation.

How phobias manifest themselves

When confronted with a frightening object or situation, a person experiences panic, he has a strong heartbeat, dizziness, and cold sweat breaks through. Even fainting is possible.

How to understand that you have a phobia

It can be suspected in the following cases.

  • - If you notice a fear of something specific for more than 6 months.
  • - If you realize that your fear is inadequate to the situation or object.
  • - If the fear manifests itself very strongly in the form of a panic attack.
  • - If fear prevents you from going to work, shopping and other daily activities.

What is scarier - a spider or an elevator

Science knows more than 300 different phobias - ranging from the fear of fire or heights and ending with the fear of any letter or number. Phobia as an overwhelming feeling of fear, combined with anxiety and even panic, can occur for a variety of reasons. All phobias are united by the fact that they affect the course of both mental and physical processes in the body. For example, in an attack of a phobia, a person not only experiences severe fear, his sensitivity becomes aggravated or dulled, he may poorly understand what is happening to him, and sometimes even loses all will to do something. At the same time, he may experience dizziness, tachycardia, nausea, weakness, a feeling of "cotton legs", and in difficult cases even vomiting and involuntary urination.

What are fobs afraid of

There are more than 300 different fears, here are the most famous and common ones.

Agoraphobia - fear of any open space, which can be a wide field, a city street, a stadium, or just a conference room. The basis of such fear is that in a large area a person is denied access to a safe place, which, as a rule, is a small room familiar to him (his own apartment, car). The most difficult stage of such a phobia occurs when a person stops leaving the house altogether.

Claustrophobia Fear of enclosed spaces, such as elevators, cars, small rooms, tunnels. This fear is closely related to the fear of suffocation from lack of air.

Acrophobia - fear of heights, and not necessarily the height of a skyscraper or bird's eye view, but also the lowest 2nd floor. It seems to acrophobes that the height attracts them and, unable to control themselves, one day they will jump and die.

Hydrophobia Fear of water intertwined with fear of drowning. Such a person will not bathe in the sea or river. Moreover, he is unlikely to sit on the shore and even take a bath. In severe cases, hydrophobes are afraid of bottled liquids or dampness.

Arachnophobia - fear of spiders. Refers to zoophobia (fear of animals in general), but implies a fear of arachnids. Arachnophobes are afraid of both living and dried spiders, and even pictures of them.

Social phobia - fear of human society. Its manifestations can be different - from fear of becoming the center of attention to hatred of people (or groups of people) as such. But most often, sociophobes are still afraid of communication and attention to themselves. With advanced social phobia, a person can even become a hermit.

How is a phobia

treated?

Phobias are treated by psychiatrists using group cognitive-behavioral therapy, which teaches a person to overcome his fear. The doctor also prescribes sedatives, if necessary.

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Unreasonable anxiety - why there is a constant state of anxiety

All people experience anxiety from time to time. For example, you can get nervous when you have a fight with a loved one or before taking an exam. Anxiety itself is not a very pleasant emotion, but it is completely normal.

Sometimes anxiety becomes persistent and uncontrollable. In situations where it interferes with everyday life, takes on a permanent or excessively acute character, the problem cannot be ignored. You should contact a specialist and figure out what anxiety means in your case. Perhaps you need qualified help.

Anxiety disorders are one of the most common mental illnesses in modern society.

Anxiety disorders are one of the most common mental illnesses in modern society. Usually a person cannot understand what anxiety means, from which it is impossible to get rid of. The disease makes you feel scared and restless for no apparent reason. If left untreated, it becomes a long-term problem and significantly reduces the quality of life. At the same time, no matter what form of anxiety disorder the patient suffers from, an experienced specialist will always select a therapy that will help to cope with the disease.

What is the alarm

Common signs of anxiety disorders to look out for include:

  • Feeling nervous and uncontrollable restlessness that is not appropriate for the situation;
  • Unreasonable panic, premonition of catastrophe or death;
  • Increased activity of the autonomic nervous system: dizziness, sweating, trembling, rapid breathing, palpitations, pain in the heart, dry mouth, nausea, stool disturbance;
  • Sleep and appetite disorders;
  • Problems with concentration, inability to distract from the object of concern;
  • Anxiety, irritability;
  • Strong, uncontrollable feeling of fear in relation to ordinary situations (phobias).

Anxiety, whatever it may be, always has characteristic features and causes. The concept of "anxiety disorder" is general and corresponds to several diagnoses, each of which has its own characteristics. It is important to distinguish one from the other in order to correctly diagnose and choose the correct treatment. Experience and high qualifications will allow a specialist to do this without difficulty.

Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD) is a mental illness characterized by so-called non-fixed anxiety. This is groundless anxiety, which does not depend on specific circumstances, but is persistent and uncontrollable. Physical manifestations in the form of vegetative symptoms are added to anxiety. All this greatly interferes with studying, working and communicating. Clinically significant is the presence of signs of GAD for 6 months.

A distinctive feature is the generalization of sensations: constant anxiety in GAD does not have a specific stressor, it is directed to life circumstances in general, including minor and unlikely situations. The course is permanent, the symptoms are always present, from time to time they intensify, but they never acquire an acute form, as in panic attacks.

The concept of "anxiety disorder" is general and corresponds to several diagnoses, each of which has its own characteristics.

Panic disorder (panic attacks) are abrupt episodes of panic and discomfort, which are accompanied by fear of death and physical manifestations: interruptions in the heart, feeling short of breath, dizziness.

Unlike GAD, panic attacks occur spontaneously and acutely. Patients are in constant expectation of an attack, they experience a debilitating feeling of anxiety. With GAD, a person is constantly in a state of anxiety, but it is not associated with the expectation of an attack, but with bad forebodings and fears about all kinds of life situations.

Panic attacks are also important to distinguish from phobic disorders. Attacks can be one of the signs of a phobia and speak of its severity. If there is a primary phobia, then it will be the main diagnosis.

This disorder should be differentiated from obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD), in which panic attacks can occur only when trying to suppress intrusive thoughts, and from post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In the latter case, anxiety occurs only under certain circumstances that remind the patient of the cause of the trauma.

People suffering from this disorder do their best to avoid frightening circumstances, which can impose significant restrictions on lifestyle.

Phobic disorder (phobias) are acute episodes of panic that are associated with specific situations and objects. People suffering from this disorder do their best to avoid frightening circumstances, which can impose significant restrictions on lifestyle.

Among the phobias, there are social phobia - an overwhelming fear of social interactions, and agoraphobia, which is a complex of similar fears associated with the fear of open and closed spaces. There are other isolated phobias, but a distinctive feature of this type is that the fear occurs in strictly defined situations and is limited only to them.

Anxious depression. The usual signs of an anxiety disorder are characterized by nervousness, irritability, problems with sleep and concentration. But, unlike other disorders, the depressive component is also mandatory - depressed mood, melancholy, lack of interest in life. In mixed anxiety and depressive disorder, the symptoms of anxiety and depression are present to an equal degree, without a clear predominance of one over the other, which does not allow them to be considered separately from each other.

Schizoaffective disorder is another disease in which mood disorders are observed: unreasonable anxiety, guilt, problems with concentration, irritability, and more. However, according to ICD-10, this diagnosis can only be confirmed when the psychotic symptoms of schizophrenia, such as delusions and hallucinations, are combined with affective disorders of a depressive or manic nature.

Obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) is obsessive ideas based on irrational thoughts and fears that force a person to perform certain actions - rituals (ritual behavior).

To alleviate concerns, a person can endlessly wash their hands, even if the skin on them becomes irritated and cracked.

Obsessions and compulsions greatly interfere with daily activities. If a person tries to ignore these thoughts, anxiety increases. Because of this, the patient is forced to continue to perform the ritual in order to relieve stress. OCD often centers around specific themes, such as the fear of germs. To alleviate concerns, a person can endlessly wash their hands, even if the skin on them becomes irritated and cracked.

Alarm causes. Diagnostics

The causes of anxiety disorders are varied, as are the types themselves. Usually, in the pathological state of unreasonable anxiety, the causes consist of a complex interaction of factors that may include:

  • genetic predisposition;
  • imbalance of neurotransmitters;
  • personality traits: people with a labile psyche, sensitive temperament, prone to negative emotions;
  • stressful situations, mental trauma, unfavorable living conditions, somatic diseases;
  • use of drugs, alcohol, improper medication.

Only a qualified psychiatrist can correctly identify the causes of anxiety and provide assistance. You can not delay seeking help, as the condition may worsen and be complicated by social isolation, suicidal actions and various types of addiction.

To conduct a complete diagnosis of the condition, the doctor uses the following methods:

  1. Psychiatric examination - a specialist collects a detailed anamnesis, takes into account clinical manifestations and compares them with diagnostic criteria.
  2. Pathopsychological research is a modern technique that helps to understand the personal characteristics and psychological state of the patient.
  3. Laboratory and instrumental examination - Neurotest and Neurophysiological test system allow you to get an objective idea of ​​the state of the nervous system and cognitive functions, EEG and other instrumental methods help to exclude organic pathology

Treatment of anxiety and anxiety disorders

Treatment depends on the type of disorder and may include one or a combination of the following approaches.

Individual psychotherapy is the main treatment for any type of disorder. Allows you to find out why anxiety has arisen and whether it is pathological. Clinical signs are analyzed and problems are worked out.

One of the effective methods for correcting anxiety disorders, especially phobic ones, OCD and GAD, has become cognitive behavioral therapy. With the help of modeling problem situations, the patient, under the guidance of a doctor, learns to cope with panic and acquires skills that allow him to return to a normal lifestyle.

Drug therapy to eliminate acute symptoms, relieve anxiety and depression, if necessary, mild pharmacotherapy with antidepressants or modern tranquilizers can be used.

As additional methods that accelerate adaptation and help to cope with stress, physiotherapy, breathing exercises, art therapy, biofeedback therapy are used.

Important

When to seek immediate help: