Dr. Zaher Krayem, Adult Clinical Psychologist from our team gave an interview for Al Hasad where he discussed anxiety as a mental health condition, its determinants and treatment.

He focused on the following important ideas:        
- Anxiety is a mental illness that needs treatment like any other illness.
- Natural chemicals in the brain, called neurotransmitters such as serotonin and norepinephrine, affect anxiety disorders.
- Anxiety is related to an individual's genetic predisposition and may appear as a result of certain stressful conditions or a particular emotional trauma. Social factors and daily stressors will act as a driver of genetic predisposition to anxiety.
- Anxiety Disorders can affect our daily lives negatively as well as our ability to make decisions.
- Some factors that can increase the risk of developing an anxiety disorder have been identified through research such as: childhood adversities, serious illnesses, psychological stress, personality traits, genetics factors, exposure to loss or failure, among others.
- Current research has found that overall social media use was associated with lower self-esteem. This may reflect increased exposure to other users’ carefully constructed profiles (idealistic) that emphasize their positive characteristics in turn diminishing adolescents’ and young adults’ own feelings of self-worth. There seems to be a correlation between increased use of social media and lack of tangible social skills that require personal human interaction impacting levels of depression and anxiety. 
- Treatment for anxiety is based on two parts: medication and psychotherapy as well as exercise, deep breathing, meditation and adequate sleep. 
- Treatment modalities include psycho-pharmacotherapy, as well as CBT based treatments that have shown the most evidence based effectiveness. These modalities include CBT, DBT, ACT, and Mindfulness based stress reduction approaches. 

You can check the full interview in Arabic on the following link.