Our goal at I Came from a Book is to attack anxiety through the remedy of reading.
Before understanding how reading can help, however, it is important to understand what anxiety is. Anxiety comes in many different forms and manifests in everyone differently. Anxiety is a mental illness—one of the widest spread mental illnesses in the world.
Anxiety is a normal emotion. We all feel it and that’s okay.
The American Psychological Association (APA) defines anxiety as “an emotion characterized by feelings of tension, worried thoughts and physical changes like increased blood pressure.”
When the emotion of anxiety becomes too much to deal with or starts affecting our lives it becomes an anxiety disorder.
Anxiety and Depression Association of America (ADAA) says that anxiety disorders develop from a complex set of risk factors, including genetics, brain chemistry, personality, and life events. The World Health Organization (WHO) explains that anxiety disorders are the most common mental disorders worldwide with specific phobia, major depressive disorder and social phobia being the most common anxiety disorders.
Anxiety can affect all aspects of our health. WHO states that people with an anxiety disorder are three to five times more likely to go to the doctor and six times more likely to be hospitalized for psychiatric disorders than those who do not suffer from anxiety disorders. ADAA Research shows that untreated children with anxiety disorders are at higher risk to perform poorly in school, miss out on important social experiences, and engage in substance abuse.
An anxiety disorder can significantly impact our life. It’s an illness and like any other illness it’s important to treat it.