Anxiety disorders

This chapter describes psychiatric disorders in which anxiety is a key feature of the overall presentation, including anxiety disorders themselves, stress-related disorders, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Phobic anxiety disorders (agoraphobia, social phobia and specific phobias) are described in Chapter 8. This chapter also briefly describes two groups of disorders that present with medically unexplained symptoms: (1) the somatoform disorders (somatization disorder, hypochondriacal disorder, somatoform autonomic dysfunction, persistent somatoform pain disorder) and (2) the dissociative or conversion disorders. All of the disorders above are grouped together in the International Classification of Diseases, 10th Revision (ICD-10) classification system as ‘neurotic, stress-related and somatoform disorders’ (Box 7.1) as they have historically been seen as interrelated and are often associated with psychological stress.