Professional man continues to struggles at work and home despite treatment for anxiety*

keywords: anxiety, attention, ADHD, ADD, ocd, concentration, organisation, medication

Occupation:
Professional Executive

Question:
Mr X was 37 year old professional who was happily married which 3 children. He had presented for life long complaints of anxiety and poor concentration at work.

Problem:
Mr X found that he was suffering from anxiety but also poor concentration and attention at work. His medical practitioner had ignored his complaints about poor concentration and attention. Mr X believed that anxiety was not the complete cause of his problem, but his doctor said that anything else was nonsense.

Complications:
Co-occurring anxiety disorder and obsessive compulsive disorder.

Outcome:
Mr X underwent a full brain function assessment and was found to show significant information processing abnormalities in response to very neutral stimuli. This related to very poor perceptual adjustment to stimuli and difficulties discriminating relevant from irrelevant stimuli. These symptoms were also found to be present in the absence of any anxiety. Furthermore anxiety-related impairments are generally triggered by anxiety-related stimuli such as phobias.

Conclusion:
It was clear that Mr X displayed an early attentional information processing disorder or attentional deficit disorder. This accounted for his difficulties and poor productivity at work. The attentional abnormalities that were identified were also no doubt contributing to excess anxiety with confusion over the interpretation of stimuli/information in the environment.

Mr X was treated with both pharmacological and psychotherapeutic approaches and was observed to make a significant recovery.

*The case examples are based on clinical experience but are dissimilar from real cases. The examples provided are for illustrative purposes only and any resemblance to a real life case is of coincidence.