Richard Heimberg on Anxiety Research and Treatment

Mental Help Net (www.mentalhelp.net) presents the Wise Counsel Podcast (wisecounsel.mentalhelp.net), hosted by David Van Nuys, Ph.D. "Richard Heimberg, Ph.D. on Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Social Anxiety Disorder Research and Treatment", posted January 1, 2008. Dr. Richard Heimberg is one of the leading scientists in the world currently working on developing effective psychotherapies for anxiety disorders. Recently, he has been conducting research on how to best treat people who have Generalized Anxiety Disorder (GAD), a condition characterized by chronic disabling worry over seemingly unimportant life issues. At this time, his research suggests that people with GAD tend to fall into the habit of worrying over little and unimportant life events as a way of distracting themselves from more pressing and serious concerns, much in the way that a student might avoid studying by cleaning her apartment. GAD sufferers get stuck in the cycle of distracting worry and do not easily move on to problem solving. Dr. Heimberg used to study Social Anxiety Disorder, which used to be called Social Phobia. The name was changed so that the word phobia could be reserved for more specific sorts of fears (such as fears of spiders). Social Anxiety Disorder, which is the second most common mental disorder after major depression, involves a more generalized fear of negative evaluation by other people and fear of the resulting feeling of humiliation and embarrassment that would follow being negatively evaluated. Social Anxiety Disorder can get so bad that some people never go on dates despite wanting to, or do not go to school or take jobs that involve social interaction for fear of being rejected. More mild cases of social anxiety disorder also occur when people are afraid of public speaking, but otherwise can function.