It is imperative to recognize the symptoms of these patients and to narrow them down to one or two clinical entities since most of the therapy for anxiety is diagnosis specific. Phobias are illogical fears of places, situations, objects, etc. Gradually increasing the exposure of the patient to the feared situation, or desensitization, usually helps treat these phobias.
Panic attacks are sudden episodic events which result in transient, acute, or severe anxiety.
Patients with panic attacks may also have phobias. They may try to overcome their panic attacks by avoiding the situation. For example, staying indoors all the time helps alleviate some of the symptoms, while confronting a group of people makes their panic symptoms worse. Some patients are anxious all the time and they manifest a baseline hyper vigilant state along with autonomic dysfunction. These people are described as suffering from generalized anxiety.