Autism Vs Anxiety

Words: 2022
Pages: 9

Anxiety disorders are the most common mental illness in the United States affecting more than 40 million adults ages 18 and older. This is about 18% of the Unites State’s population. Autism, or an Autism Spectrum Disorder, is seen in 1 of 68 children. These statistics are proof that anxiety and autism are growing topics that need to be discussed. Autism and anxiety contain many of the same ideas but they also differ in some ways. Though the behaviors that these conditions bring can be quite similar, how long they last for for example is completely opposite from one another. Even though they are different, they still affect a person’s life greatly, especially someone with autism. Being an autistic person and having anxiety at the same time can …show more content…
For example, the autistic person may become frustrated in social situation which then can lead to them banging things or hurting themselves because they cannot express their feelings.
Anxiety is “a nervous disorder characterized by a state of excessive uneasiness and apprehension, typically with compulsive behavior or panic attacks.” (google definition) It makes certain situations, specifically social, very stressful and hard to deal with. Harvard Medical School describes anxiety as, “...a reaction to stress that has both physiological and physical features.” This is indicating that anxiety not only messes with the brain, but also affects someone physically. Also, anxiety isn’t just found in someone’s thoughts or emotions. It can also be altered or impacted based on more physical features like outside environments. Certain environments may trigger anxiety more than others. Surprisingly, it was only somewhat recently that anxiety disorders were actually recognized. The healthy places states that, “Anxiety Disorders were only recognized in 1980 by the American Psychiatric Association.” Before anxiety disorders were recognized, someone experiencing it would simply be told the generic
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In Animals in Translation, the author Temple Grandin who has autism said, “Autism has a lot in common with obsessive-compulsive disorder, which is listed as an anxiety disorder in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual.” This is stating that autism and anxiety have a direct relationship with one another. It is believed that as a person with autism gets older, their level of anxiety increase. “Anxiety and poor stress management are common concerns in clinical samples of children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Anxiety may worsen during adolescence, as young people face an increasingly complex social milieu and often become more aware of their differences and interpersonal difficulties.” Once people get older, they are faced with more social situations than they were faced with as a child which causes them anxiety. Someone with autism has trouble in social settings or circumstances resulting in them to become more fearful and uneasy. Just having autism or anxiety is challenging but imagine having both. There is a doubled amount of pressure and stress put onto that person. Lucy Neville who was diagnosed with social anxiety at age 12 told the Huffington Post “In such a time of change where you are already feeling so vulnerable, my anxiety caused me to hyper-analyse every situation and I’d expect the worst to happen at all times.” People with autism and anxiety deal