For people who have never suffered from anxiety-related depression, the very phrase "anxiety related depression" can seem like a contradiction in terms.
After all, anxiety is an over- stimulated "up" feeling, and depression is a severe "down" experience. So they couldn't go together, right?
Unfortunately, they go together more often than not. In fact, half of patients diagnosed with anxiety-- including all it's various forms from panic disorder to post-traumatic stress disorder- also suffer from depression. And most depressed people suffer from some form of anxiety.
This combination of problems is not just emotionally crippling, it is life threatening. This a serious clinical problem because as many as 92 percent of depressed patients who had attempted suicide are also plagued by severe anxiety. And over a million people succeed at committing suicide each year worldwide. That does not include the millions of people who die each year of major illnesses like heat disease, stroke, cancer, immune system illnesses and other diseases, who may have had anxiety related depression as a major contributing factor.
Fortunately, many alternative treatments address the causes of the problem.
