The health clinic located at Lethbridge College sees many students and even some staff members who come in complaining of anxiety or stress related symptoms.

“We most definitely people, students and staff that come in here,” says Mary Coles, head nurse at Lethbridge College. “A lot of times, they’re presenting with some chest pain, and they’re having trouble breathing and they’re hyperventilating, and they’re very panicked.”

Coles also says that the first thing the nurses and doctors at the clinic do is rule out anything organic, such as the possibility of a heart attack, and they will check for vital signs, putting patients on oxygen and check for a variety of different symptoms.

After ruling out things such as a heart attack, they focus on calming the affected person down.

“We have to then calm them down, and one of the very best [ways] to do that is to do a series of three deep breaths,” says Coles. “You take a breath in very, very deeply, but when you’re blowing it out, you have to have a lot of resistance in your lips, like you’re blowing up a balloon, so [it will take longer to exhale].”

Nurses will get the patients to imagine themselves in an environment that makes them happy in order to slow their breathing.

“Having them do visualisations [of] things that, in the past, have been a place of calm and content for them, Looking up at the sky, seeing a flock of geese, watching the clouds float,” says Coles.

Symptoms of a panic attack can include shortness of breath, sweating, shaking, chills or hot flashes, tightening of the chest, dizziness, tingling, and it may feel like a person’s heart is jumping out of their chest. They often come on suddenly and without much warning. Some people worry that they may be having a heart attack or a stroke, which is why panic attacks are so frightening.

If panic and anxiety symptoms keep reoccurring, people may need to try medications that can help stop or at least lessen the impact of anxiety and panic symptoms.

“One of the most common is Effexor, it’s [an] anti-anxiety, and a bit of an anti-depressant. [It] seems to be one of the better ones,” says Coles.” Ativan can make you feel quite sleepy, it’s [for crisis situations], it’s quick acting.”

A panic attack can last between 5-10 minutes.

According to AnxietyBC.com, “people with a phobia of dogs might have a panic attack whenever they are near a dog. But in this case, the panic attack is expected, and the person is afraid of the dog, not the panic attack.”

Everyone feels anxious from time to time, and often a sense of panic as well depending what kind of situation they are in, be it working last minute on a homework assignment, or rushing around town to get errands done. These feelings are normal, but it’s when they are too much for a person to bear that they become a problem.

“Panic disorder, in particular, will affect about 3.7% of Canadians in their lifetime (just under a million people) and affects 1 to 2% in a given year. On average, it appears in a person’s mid-20s, and like most other anxiety disorders, is treated more commonly in women than in men,” explains heretohelp.bc.ca.

Originally posted 2009-02-06 17:51:25. Republished by Blog Post Promoter