Panic Disorder

... Illness no deterrent to good results Your browser does not support script E D U C A T I O N Go elsewhere --- News Business Market Watch Sports Lifestyle Entertainment Technology Education Mind Our English Columnists Photos Video Clips Last 7 Days 30-Day Archive RSS Mobile Edition What's Hot Write to Us --- MyStar AllMalaysia.info Global Malaysians Kuali.com --- Classifieds Motoring Property Jobs --- AudioFile Clove Maritime Youth2 Horoscope Comics Directory Site Map The Web News Classifieds Stock Sunday March 19, 2006 Illness no deterrent to good results Anis Wahida Abd Wahid ANIS Wahida Abd Wahid suffers from Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD) which makes her obsessed with details.

This, in turn, causes her to read through articles and do her revision repeatedly.

But the disorder turned out to be an advantage.

For being “meticulous” in her studies, she scored straight 10 1As in last year’s SPM examinations.

Anis (pic), from SMK Derma, Kangar, has been suffering from OCD since she was in Form Four.

She sat for the SPM at the Tuanku Fauziah Hospital on the advice of her doctors.

What is OCD?

A person diagnosed with OCD usually suffers from obsessions or compulsions that cause marked distress.

These compulsions often interfere with a person’s normal routine.

Anis said her condition had made her obsessed with her studies.

“I would read a subject over and over again, and also read the ...

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LOUIS POST-DISPATCH03/18/2006 (Brian Williamson/P-D) Miriam thought she was doing what so many others were unable to do: winning the battle of the middle-age bulge.

About six years ago, the mother of three, who was in her mid-40s, was eating three low-calorie, low-fat meals and exercising more than two hours a day.

“I thought I was healthy,” says Miriam, 52, of Scottsdale, Ariz.

“I’d say, ‘Look what great shape I’m in.

Look how healthy I am, because I exercise and don’t eat bad things.’” Never mind that she was consuming a mere 850 calories while burning far more than that during her daily 7-mile runs and rigorous workouts.

Or that she carried a scant 94 pounds on her 5-foot frame.

Or that her body fat had withered to 11 percent, well below the 18 to 25 percent that’s considered healthy.

People told Miriam she looked bony.

They asked whether she was sick.

“I would tell them, ‘No, I just really like being thin,’” ...

...ba href=/panic disorder/a/b from their father.

In the world of behavioral therapists, however, panic attacks begin and end not with brain chemicals but with thoughts and actions.

Therapists say particular types of people are most prone to panic attacks.

Perfectionists and overachievers are more likely to have anxiety overflow.

No matter what causes panic attacks, doctors and therapists agree that the real trouble starts after the first panic attack.

Singer Carly Simon once confessed not only to panic attacks but also to a secondary and just as crippling fear, the fear of more panic attacks.

A fear of an attack returning can cause the development of other phobias, such as performance anxiety, claustrophobia or the fear of the outdoors.

"I've talked to people who won't go to the dentist or go get their hair cut because they don't want to have a panic attack in a place where they cannot easily flee," says Margaret Summy, a Fort Worth therapist.

Often, those people assume their fear is of the dentist or of the hairstylist.

"That's not it," Summy says.

"After the first attack, they start analyzing it and say, 'I'm not going to do that again.' " One West Texas woman whom Vinson treated had refused to leave her house without her husband for 11 years, so fearful was she that another panic attack would occur.

She told Vinson that one day she left the house by herself and tried to spark another panic attack.

"You can't have one when you want to," he told her.

"You have to fear it or it won't appear...