420 Mental Health
➤ Other common
names for anxiety
are ‘nerves’, ‘nervous
attacks’, and
‘heart distress’.
➤ When a woman
has severe chest
pain or difficulty
breathing, she
should get medical
help. These may
be a sign of serious
physical illness.
Anxiety (feeling nervous or worried)
Everyone feels nervous or worried from time to time.
When these feelings are caused by a specific situation, they
usually go away soon afterwards. But if the anxiety continues
or becomes more severe, or if it comes without any reason,
then it may be a mental health problem.
Signs:
• feeling tense and nervous
without reason
• shaking hands
• sweating
• feeling the heart pound
(when there is no heart disease)
• difficulty thinking clearly
• frequent physical complaints that are not
caused by physical illness and that increase
when a woman is upset
Panic attacks are a severe kind of anxiety. They happen
suddenly and can last from several minutes to several hours. In
addition to the signs above, a person feels terror or dread, and
fears that she may lose consciousness (faint) or die. She may
also have chest pain, difficulty breathing, and feel that something
terrible is about to happen.
Reactions to trauma
After a person has experienced trauma, she may have many
different reactions, such as:
• Going over the trauma again and again in her mind.
While she is awake, she may keep remembering
the terrible things that happened. At night she
may dream about them or be unable to fall asleep
because she is thinking about them.
Where Women Have No Doctor 2012