I just turned 18 last month and about my Junior year of high school i was diagnosed with anxiety and agoraphobia. Anxiety runs in my family and unfortunately i got it. It was really bad in the first year of having it, everyday in school before i started home school i would feel anxious and nervous. I could never hold still, and i absolutely hated being in the hallways and classrooms. I took medication at one point and also counseling but that really didn't help. Now im on no medication and i still feel extremely nervous in crowded places such as the gym and school talent shows. I think i have OCD as well because i always have unwanted thoughts. Honestly i feel like im a freak alone in this. Im so young and i feel like my life is over. Anxiety has stopped me from doing a lot of things i wouldve love to have done. I wish i could go back for at least one day before all this hit me..
Is this normal? .___.
Is this normal? .___.
*under the right conditions*).
By bringing up RGS2, you're trying to convince little old me that one gene that codes for exactly one protein is the cause of a complex set of behaviors. There is absolutely no one gene that codes for a range of behaviors! This is not my speculation. It's just not that simple. There are TOO many proximate causes for the set of behaviors that characterize anxiety, to take one gene and say "EUREKA if this protein wasn't down-regulated/mutated, you wouldn't be so anxious!".
And thanks for the insight but after googling RGS2, I found what I expected to find. Articles based on a study that was done four years ago, with test fields ranging from 50-700. So, I looked for that journal and found some interesting results. There definitely is something going on there with the variant RGS2 protein except apparently not enough for conclusive results [which is typical in studies like these]. "Although our primary hypothesis was that RGS2 would be associated with introversion, we performed secondary analyses to determine whether the effect was specific to this trait. In those analyses, we observed no association between RGS2 markers and the other NEO subscales (neuroticism, openness, conscientiousness, or agreeableness)." There's a lot of scientific mumbo jumbo, but they absolutely NEVER say that RGS2 determines anxiety disorders.
They in fact end with "Further studies will be needed to determine which, if any, anxiety disorder phenotypes are most tightly related to RGS2. Given the association with BI and introversion, 2 traits that are risk factors for SAD, we would predict that SAD is the most likely anxiety disorder to be associated with RGS2. A recent study by Leygraf et al59 reported nominally significant evidence of association between RGS2 markers and panic disorder, although these results would not survive correction for multiple testing. To the extent that genetic effects on DSM-IV anxiety disorders may be smaller than effects on the intermediate phenotypes examined herein, much larger samples may be needed for studies of the clinical disorders."
http://www2.massgeneral.org/chgr/PDFs/anxiety%20genetics.pdf?dopt=Abstract [Why don't you go ahead and read this commentary on two separate studies done last year]
Do I even have to mention that none of these studies take the lives of the controls and subjects into consideration? All are still in a primordial stage, and it will probably be another decade before pharmaceutical companies can even begin thinking about drugs, based on similar research.
If you can find anything that proves me otherwise, please, send it my way. Until then, fuck you very much.